


we are not heroes

by outofcases (hockeycaptains)



Series: superhero verse [1]
Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Childhood Trauma, Earnest Boys Making Stupid Plans, F/M, Fire, First Kiss, Genre-appropriate violence, Kidnapping, M/M, Mild Language, OT5 Friendship, Self-Sacrifice, Superheroes, implied PTSD, multiple POVs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-27
Updated: 2015-01-27
Packaged: 2018-03-09 06:41:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 47,203
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3240047
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hockeycaptains/pseuds/outofcases
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Zayn is just your average guy, if you discount his shadowy past and the fact that he can read minds.  It's not his fault that the friends he's gathered over the years are adamant about saving the world.  All he's doing is trying to survive, but it's not easy when things seem to be against him at every turn.  He's not a hero.  None of them are, and he's not going to change his mind about it.  It's just hard when the world seems determined to prove him wrong.</p><p>Throw in a power-hungry super villain, a slew of well-intentioned disasters, an ensemble of willing and gifted friends, and a heaping spoonful of idiotic self-sacrifice, and you might just have yourself an origin story.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. ZAYN

**Author's Note:**

> It's here. 47k later, I have finally finished the superhero fic. The working title of this was "another ziam superhero au that no one asked for," which still seems appropriate, but guys. I am so so stoked to finally be posting. It's wildly self-indulgent and I had so much fun writing it.
> 
> I have some thank you's first, though, because this fic would not exist without the help of some especially wonderful people. Bleona, you are the reason I write for this fandom. Thank you for putting up with the monster you created. Noel, you are the reason I finished this. Thank you for replying to my at-times-incoherent messages, and for looking over it for me. It means the world.
> 
> Before we jump in: this is first and foremost an ot5 fic about figuring out what it means to be a hero. I wouldn't say the relationships are minimal, but this is a story about love in the middle of a war. I mentioned it in the tags, but after Cher, the characters listed are mostly just mentioned here and there as part of the ensemble cast. 
> 
> If you're into this/want to ask me questions/want to see my writing process/want to prompt a timestamp/etc/etc you can find me on tumblr at outofcases.
> 
> Okay. That's all, I think. Thank you again to everyone who helped make this happen, and I hope you enjoy!

Zayn finds him when they’re both eighteen. 

Or, well, actually, he finds Zayn.

Zayn is on a smoke break (nasty habit, his mum would always tell him, and he knows it, but he’s on his own now, and he can’t help it if his coping mechanisms aren’t the healthiest) trying to avoid his coworkers, when a boy stumbles out of seemingly thin air and slams straight into him.

“Bro!” yelps Zayn, feeling his back crush against the rough press of brick. He isn’t hurt, or even upset, but the shock is enough to startle a frown out of him.

The boy shakes his hair out of his eyes and backs up hastily, apology written all over his face. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t see you there; are you alright?” His words come out in a bit of a rush, and his voice is lower than Zayn would’ve guessed by looking at him.

Zayn blinks once, twice. “You came out of nowhere.”

“Yeah,” says the boy, tugging at the hem of his t-shirt like he doesn’t realize he’s doing it, “sorry about that.”

He’s about Zayn’s height, maybe a little taller, with green eyes and flushing cheeks, and Zayn says it again: “no, you _literally_ came out of nowhere. You appeared out of thin air.” He’s starting to question himself, but he knows that he isn’t just making this up, and he isn’t willing to back down from this one, not when he knows how much could be riding on it. 

“I think you’re seeing things, mate.” The other boy chuckles, only a touch awkward. The tone is too casual, and Zayn bites his lip, tries to focus, has to stop himself from screwing his eyes shut – and then he can hear, clear as day: _play it cool, Harry, just convince him, I think he’s buying it._

“Harry,” says Zayn, solemn, and smiles when the other boy jolts a little, “I know what I saw.”

Harry looks at him suspiciously, brows furrowing. “How do you know my name?”

Zayn has to be careful about this because blurting it out is generally not the best way to do this, no matter how hard it is to skirt around the issue. Zayn isn’t usually one for mind games, but this is the best he can offer, right now. “I’m Zayn,” he says, “just so we’re even,” and then, “does that happen a lot? The randomly appearing places, I mean?”

Harry shrugs before he remembers that he’s supposed to be alarmed. “I don’t know what you’re saying, Zayn, but I need to go. I’m late for class.” He seems irrationally upset about this, and Zayn chalks it up to him being some hotshot university bloke, probably worried about his GPA.

“Wait,” says Zayn, stepping away from the wall, hands up like he’s approaching a wounded animal and not a boy with an increasingly irritated expression on his face, “you’re special, aren’t you?” He says it more quietly than he means to, feels his eyes shift from hopeful to pleading. It’s just- he needs Harry to say it, or at least acknowledge it, or maybe just not leave Zayn standing here thinking about wasted opportunities and all of the things he could’ve done differently.

Harry doesn’t take the bait, looks even more alarmed and half turns around. “Listen, I need to leave-”

And then Zayn pulls out all the stops and hopes for the best, knows he’s being reckless but can’t find it in himself to care. This is not how he usually operates. He’s starting to think he might be out of his mind after all. “I can hear your thoughts. That’s how I knew your name, and that’s how I know you did appear out of nowhere, and I’m not crazy.” It comes out in a rush, and then Zayn is standing there with his hands out in front of him like a sacrifice, like he’s dumping himself out and praying Harry won’t flash out of there the way he came. 

Harry laughs, but it sounds strangled in his throat. “You sure you’re not crazy?” But he’s scuffing a boot against the wet pavement, looking down, and biting so hard at his lower lip that Zayn is scared he’ll draw blood, and he’s still here. He’s still here.

Zayn takes it as his cue to provide some proof. “You’re thinking about how many miles you miscalculated your jump by – oh, that’s a lot; I’m not surprised you’re late for class – and you’re wondering how I’m doing this right now. I’m not lying.”

“You can read minds.” Harry sounds completely floored.

Zayn’s shoulders sag, relieved. “That’s what I’m trying to tell you, man.” His break has probably ended already, but his manager loves him (she says she doesn’t, but he sweet talks her, and sometimes works overtime, so he can get away with almost anything these days), and he needs to talk to Harry, needs to not lose him the second they part ways. It’s been years since he last met anyone with abilities like his, and he doesn’t want to talk about what happened the last time, and how it ended in fire and pain, and he still wakes up screaming some nights. 

But Harry is here and alive and looks like he’s considering the offer that Zayn hasn’t even put on the table yet. He’s not focusing hard enough to hear Harry now, just waiting patiently for an answer, and it comes. “I call it jumping,” he says, and Zayn nods, “but I’m not very good at it yet. I only figured out I could do it a few years ago, and I was too scared to try on purpose until, like, six months ago.” Zayn nods again. “I miss a lot,” he adds, gesturing at the supermarket as if to say ‘this is not my university and I didn’t mean to end up here.’

Zayn is about to go into his own…thing, eager to share despite the nerves coiled in his stomach, when one of his coworkers pokes her head out. “Zayn!” she calls out, voice distorted by the distance between he and Harry and the back door. “Break’s over! We need a cleanup in aisle 5 and it’s got your name written all over it!” Zayn groans, and Harry laughs, and the words he was about to share die in his throat, sparkle lost under his tongue and between his teeth.

“I need to get back to work,” says Zayn, because he does, and Harry looks disproportionately crestfallen. He rushes to add, “but give me your phone number; we can meet again later,” and the desperate edge of _I don’t want to lose touch with you so soon after we’ve met_ goes unsaid, but he’s sure Harry hears it.

Harry smiles and a set of picture perfect dimples appears. “I was going to say something about trusting strangers,” he starts, and they both laugh, “but you’re right; we should talk, and I need to get going, too.” His eyes are sparkling with interest and some of the weak sunlight that’s filtering through the clouds, and they exchange numbers, and Harry disappears from one blink to the next.

Zayn looks at the spot where he was standing and hopes he made it to class okay.

…

They’re fast friends, Zayn and Harry, fond of each other and quick-witted and hard working. It takes a handful of months of close contact and lots of practice, but eventually Zayn can hear Harry’s thoughts without even having to try, and Harry can teleport (jumping, he likes to call it, and Zayn thinks it has a catchy ring to it, but in the end it really is teleportation) with pinpoint accuracy anywhere within a mile radius, give or take. He’s also gotten better at anchoring himself to people, only landed on Zayn a few times before figuring out the right distance, and he doesn’t do it all the time, but it isn’t hurting anyone to practice.

Two weeks after they move in together (Harry has to cover more than his share of the rent, but he doesn’t mind at all, says something about an inheritance and refuses to let Zayn struggle no matter how loudly or spectacularly he protests), they find Louis.

It happens like this:

They’re walking across the street, shoulders bumping as they hunch against the onslaught of rain, when they hear a horn honking loudly behind them. The car is twisting out of control, headed straight for a smaller boy wearing a hoodie about fifteen meters behind them. It’s happening too fast – there’s no possible way the boy will manage to jump out of the way in time, or avoid what will most likely be a fatal injury. The road is slick with water. There’s no time.

Zayn can hear himself yelling when the collision happens, the sound ripping out of his throat. 

The boy gets hit by the car. 

His body is thrown across the wet pavement. He lands at an unnatural angle. Zayn thinks, feeling a bit sick, that his spine must have snapped nearly in half the way he hit the ground. 

“Fuck,” he breathes, hands shaking by his sides. Harry nods silently, equally shell shocked, shoulders stiff like he’d been bracing for impact, too. There’s a brief, heavy pause in which Zayn and Harry are completely frozen, just staring at the prone figure lying on the asphalt.

And then the boy gets up.

Harry swears unthinkingly and starts running toward him, back into the street, and Zayn tries to grab his wrist, but Harry is essentially unstoppable when he has a destination in mind.

Zayn’s mind short circuits a little when he hears Harry’s thoughts. _Louis? Louis? How did he- I thought he was dead, I don’t know what’s happening; he was dead and then he was dead again, and now he’s alive. I don’t- Louis Louis Louis_ , and then he’s careening straight into the boy’s arms, and they’re laughing and twirling, and Zayn is standing awkwardly off to the side while they (apparently) reunite.

He walks up to them properly after a few moments, shoving his hands into his pockets and trying not to let his shock read too much on his face. “Zayn, this is-“

“Louis, yeah, I got it,” Zayn smiles, and Harry looks like he’s fighting tears and also a blush. “I’m Zayn. How are you alive?”

Louis grins, apparently charmed, and then laughs like they’ve all been let in on a glorious cosmic joke, only wincing a little when the movement jostles his spine. His eyes are blazing electric blue, and there’s blood still oozing from an ugly cut on the side of his face. He doesn’t look bothered, just keeps Harry tucked into his side and smiles, smiles, smiles. “That’s the question, innit?” and he sounds completely unaffected by the fact that he was just run over by a car in the middle of the road.

Zayn grins, too, helpless not to despite the fact that he’s still utterly confused. Louis’ thoughts are fast and piercing, relieved to see Harry and whirring through guesses as to how long it will take him to heal from this. He’s the loudest thinker Zayn’s ever heard, louder than Harry even after Zayn’s gotten used to tuning in to him, and Zayn likes him immediately, wants to hear more from this boy with the sharp grin and quick mind and wicked laugh.

People are starting to point, and Louis must notice at the same time Zayn does, because he shifts away from Harry, eyes darting around, shifting clean out of the warmth he’d been exuding. “Looks like it’s my cue to leave, then,” he says, chipper, but his thoughts all ring with regret and it sounds false even out loud. 

“Come back to ours,” insists Harry, “the least we can do is help you get cleaned up, maybe catch up a bit.” His eyes are full to the brim with hope, and Zayn hides a laugh because in the time he’s known Harry he’s yet to meet a single human being that can resist that look.

True to form, Louis complies, grumbling a little but genuinely pleased that he won’t have to go back to his flat alone covered in blood. Apparently his roommate is already suspicious of how quickly his bruises disappear in general, and this takes the cake thus far in terms of healing rapidly.

So they go back to Harry and Zayn’s flat and clean Louis up, and Zayn gets to learn a bit of his story.

Louis is scrappy by nature; you can tell just looking at him, but he’s also surprisingly soft. He opens up about his family, and it’s evident in the warmth of his tone how much he cares about them. He talks about how it takes a lot to hurt him, and how he’s yet to incur an injury that puts him out of commission for more than a few hours. 

He and Harry met in their school choir years ago and became instant best friends, spent all their time together, _almost dated, really should’ve, not sure why we didn’t_ , thinks Louis, and Zayn doesn’t say anything. They lost touch when Louis had to drop out of school and started working more to support his family. 

Harry had protested, arguing that he could help them financially, but Louis doesn’t have to say it for Zayn to know he’s too proud to accept an offer like that. Zayn’s the same way, though maybe not quite to the same extent. Harry pushed and Louis balked. It went on like this until they were going in circles, so Louis faked his own death, apparently, and let Harry think he was never coming back. 

And now they’re here, and they found each other, and it doesn’t look like they want to let go any time soon. Aside from a few days of freezing silence, Harry doesn’t even seem bitter, really, just happy to see Louis again, and Zayn marvels at his capacity for forgiveness. Zayn would’ve strangled Louis with his own bare hands for an over-dramatic stunt like that.

Zayn talks to him about the newest Marvel movie, and Louis lights up like Christmas, and they spend the rest of the evening loose and happy chatting like old mates. (And if Zayn thinks, dizzily, that friendship isn’t supposed to be this easy – first Harry, and now Louis – then he keeps it to himself).

Later, much later, they talk openly about their abilities. It isn’t that Zayn didn’t trust Louis that first day, but he knew they’d need to take it slow. Louis was a flight risk. Zayn didn’t want to lose him, didn’t think Harry could take it, either. 

It’s two weeks in when they all come clean.

Harry jumps across the room, and Louis surprises them both by laughing delightedly and clapping. “And you?” he asks, looking at Zayn, “what’s your special talent, then? Let’s have a look.”

Zayn says, with a completely straight face, “I breathe purple fire,” and immediately bursts into stitches at the look in Louis’ eyes. “Kidding,” he laughs, “only kidding. I can read minds.”

“Ha ha,” deadpans Louis, “no, seriously, what can you do? Or are you just the moral support?”

“He can hear your thoughts,” supplies Harry (so helpful, that boy), and Louis blinks once, twice, three times.

Louis straightens up in his seat and meets Zayn’s even gaze. “Well then,” he says, defiant, “what am I thinking?” and Zayn knows that this is a test, that if he makes one wrong move it could turn ugly very quickly.

Fortunately, Louis is an easy read, even on the quieter days. “The World Cup,” says Zayn, trying not to let his eyes go soft and amused and probably failing, “and how you think England really has a chance this year, even if no one else does. Didn’t realize you were such an idealist.” He earns a jab in the side and an awestruck smile for that, is helpless not to grin back.

And then: “Wait, does that mean you could read my mind the whole time we’ve known each other?” He looks slightly afraid.

Zayn just shrugs, placid and unwilling to give Louis a hard time about it. “If you’re really that curious about my how I do my hair, you could’ve just asked.”

Harry laughs like he can’t help it; Louis shoves Zayn’s shoulder, and they all relax. It takes months for them to get the hang of each other completely, though Harry and Louis are almost always attached at the hip. Eventually they figure it out, and that winter they fall into each other over and over, each time wilder than the last.

…

It takes time.

Zayn learns that Louis is sadder than he looks.

He’s reckless, sometimes; Zayn can see it in his eyes. It’s the kind of reckless that comes with being essentially indestructible, but there’s more to it, he thinks. It’s the way he tries to intercept hurt before it can hit other people, taking an elbow to the ribs when he shields Harry from a crowd, picking up the broken shards of a glass Zayn dropped without flinching, looking at the blood on his hands and shrugging because, “it’ll heal up, good as new.”

That isn’t the point, but Zayn and Harry let it slide because they’re all just doing their best, and Louis is hurricane, tornado, couldn’t be stopped even if they locked him up and threw away the key. 

It’s scary, sometimes, seeing Louis’ face black and blue after he mouthed off one too many times to an ex-boyfriend and three of the guy's friends, and let himself get backed into an alley (and Zayn chided him for it, of course, because of all the harebrained, ill-contrived, idiotic, careless- he could go on, but Louis gets the picture, and all he does is smile at Zayn because he’s covered in bruises and he doesn’t even care). 

When he thinks Zayn isn’t paying attention, he’ll think about how he loves his family, but he hasn’t seen his mum in ages, how he had to move away so he could send money back. Or how he’s so in love it’s painful, but he’d rather pull in a nightclub than come home to something that could walk away. 

Louis loves so much, and he is at least two-thirds bravado even on the good days. Half the time it doesn’t seem as if his skin is big enough to contain every piece of him at once.

Zayn wants to ask Louis all sorts of questions, but he already hears so much that it doesn’t feel fair. He wants to tell Louis to be careful, but the day they met the boy, he got hit by a car, didn’t even bother trying to get out of the way. Careful isn’t in Louis’ vocabulary.

…

Louis’ roommate is cheerful and very Irish and named Niall, and no one suspects he’s anything but normal until he and Zayn meet for the first time.

It’s Louis’ 20th birthday party, and all of them have to promise at least fifteen times not to mention the fact that Louis is no longer a teenager lest they face a penalty of slow, painful death. The first half of the party goes smoothly, alcohol pouring and laughter sparkling in the air like glitter, but Louis is an emotional drunk, and after a while he retreats to his bedroom for (another) existential crisis. Harry follows him up quietly.

They don’t come back down, and from what Zayn can hear (which is much, much more than he wants to be hearing, god, this is so far beyond what he signed up for when he became friends with these two), it would be a bad idea to bother the two of them right now.

Niall walks up to Zayn at half three, when they’re the only ones left in the kitchen, and the living room has begun to empty out. His shirt is almost all the way unbuttoned, and there’s a tie around his head, but he looks completely sober, amazingly, cheeks flushed bright and eyes clear. “Hey, Zayn. Louis speaks highly of you,” he says, leaning up against the wall where Zayn is standing, and Zayn raises an eyebrow before nodding.

“You, too.” Zayn has heard countless stories about bottle blonde Niall with his fierce laughter and unwavering loyalty and ability to drink anyone under the table. “Pretty sure he speaks highest of Harry, though.”

Niall grins and claps Zayn on the shoulder. Zayn has known him for all of two minutes, and he already knows that his presence is magnetic, that his attention is like a spotlight, that this is the kind of kid Zayn would’ve wanted to be able to hate in school but couldn’t for the fact that he’s so nice. “I like you already,” Niall says, like he’s made up his mind and no one could change it. “Can’t believe we didn’t meet until now; I feel like I know your life story, mate.”

“Guess we just kept missing each other,” says Zayn, and then he listens in on Niall’s thoughts out of pure instinct and maybe a little bit of curiosity. Or, well, he tries to, but it takes him a bit to focus. All he hears is buzzing silence and sounds of people leaving the house. He tries again, and then again. Nothing. If he pushes any harder, he thinks he’ll start sweating or screw his eyes shut or something equally embarrassing, so he goes for the direct approach. “Hey,” he says, trying not to panic too much, “this might sound crazy, but are you thinking about anything right now?”

Niall looks unbothered by the question, just shrugs a little and picks at a fingernail. “Just thinking about dry cleaning I need to pick up tomorrow, and I’ve got that new Justin Timberlake song stuck in my head, why? Is it that obvious you don’t have my full attention?” he chuckles to himself, “sorry about that, it’s an awful habit, can’t help it if my mind’s always running. My mum used to yell at me about it, still does, actually.”

Zayn’s world tilts on its axis. “Hold on a minute, okay?”

Niall looks at him funny but nods, turning to make easy conversation with the last stragglers in the hallway, and then Zayn is racing up the stairs toward Louis’ bedroom. “Hey!” he yells, banging on the door, “Make yourselves decent, I need to talk to you!”

Louis and Harry emerge moments later, rumpled but thankfully clothed, and Zayn can hear their thoughts, and he sighs in relief. “What’s happened?” asks Harry, looking increasingly alarmed as he takes in Zayn’s likely panicked expression.

Zayn listens. _Is there a fire? Is everything okay downstairs? I knew I should’ve checked up on it all an hour ago; are the cops here? Zayn needs to say something, seriously. He doesn’t look too good, maybe he’s sick? Wait, can he hear this? Hey, Zayn, mate, what’s wrong?_ And then he snaps out of it, able to breathe a little easier.

“I can’t hear Niall,” he says. “This has never happened to me before. I don’t- I can’t hear him. At all. It’s like there’s nothing there, or he’s shielding me, or something.”

Louis frowns. “You mean, like, his thoughts? You can’t hear them?”

Zayn shakes his head, knows his eyes must look wide and confused. “Nothing. Just silence.”

“But you can still hear us?”

“Yeah, clearly as ever.”

“Surely there’s a reason,” says Harry, scrubbing at his eyes with the back of a loose fist as he squints into the brightly lit hallway, “maybe he’s blocking you or something. Maybe he’s special, but he doesn’t know it.”

Louis’ nodding as Harry speaks. “Or maybe he does know! Could be why he’s so smug all the time, maybe, probably.”

Zayn chews on his lower lip. “Maybe, I don’t know,” he says uselessly, trying to fill up the silence.

_I am so drunk_ , thinks Louis as soon as he finishes speaking, and Zayn smirks despite himself. _I am so extremely drunk, and it’s my birthday, and I want to snog Harry right now; maybe I will. Zayn should leave; this can all wait until tomorrow, definitely._

Zayn, gracious friend that he is, takes the hint and walks back out to the kitchen.

Niall is gone, probably having retreated to his room to sleep, and Zayn decides to curl up on the couch. More than likely, Harry will stay the night, and in the morning, it shouldn’t be hard to convince him to make breakfast for the rest of them. They can talk then, or not – this isn’t a disaster or even that important, not in the grand scheme of things, and Zayn can survive one night not knowing why he’s apparently run into the only person in the city whose mind he can’t read.

Louis was right. This can wait.

…

The next morning, Zayn still can’t hear Niall.

It’s not a big deal, he reasons with himself. He’s young, and surely there must be some people on this Earth that he can’t hear; but this is the first time he can ever remember it happening, and he’d be lying if he said he wasn’t shaken.

Still, he plays it cool. Niall might be a mystery, but he’s cheerful and friendly and fun to be around. Zayn may be reserved, but he will also never say no to karaoke and despite popular opinion he can, in fact, be very tactile, so they get along pretty well. 

The day passes without incident, and then another day passes, and then it’s been a week, and Zayn can’t hear Niall. But he thinks they’re becoming friends, and he isn’t exactly sure how he’d bring it up, anyway. He somehow doubts that asking, “Do you know why I can’t read your mind?” would be particularly effective unless the goal is to make Niall think Zayn is messing with him, or something.

In the end, surprisingly enough, it’s Louis that brings Niall into their supernaturally inclined business. 

Or, well. In hindsight, actually, Zayn shouldn’t be surprised that it’s Louis. 

They’re all piled into Louis and Niall’s living room, which is pretty typical for a Friday afternoon when Zayn’s not working, and Harry steps out to the kitchen to make a sandwich. Niall and Louis are on the floor with their heads tucked together looking at something on Louis’ computer, and Zayn’s on the sofa leafing through a book.

The quiet is peaceful and comfortable until it’s broken by a yelp. “Harry?” calls Louis, “All right in there?”

“I’m fine!” yells Harry from the kitchen, but it comes out a little strangled. “Don’t worry about it! Everything is great!”

Zayn listens in, but all he hears is very careful silence – it’s different than it is with Niall, because there’s a thread of intent hanging low beneath it. Harry wised up to Zayn’s methods pretty quickly, and can keep his mind blank for short periods of time if he tries hard enough. Meditation, he’d told Zayn with a grin, and Zayn couldn’t even be upset. Harry likes his privacy. Zayn won’t begrudge him that.

So it’s all quiet, and then there’s another shout from the other room. Louis is on his feet in an instant, rolling his eyes, but there’s worry written in the coiled line of his shoulders. He walks into the kitchen, and Zayn and Niall wait patiently until Zayn hears Louis think _shit_ rather loudly from the next room, and then he’s dragging Niall with him until they’re all standing next to the counter looking at Harry.

“I’m fine,” he insists, running a hand through his hair, “just cut myself a bit, that’s all; nothing major.”

The blood running down the fingertips on his other hand undercuts his point a bit, and without thinking about it (Zayn would know if he had), Louis scoops up the hand and presses it between his own.

“Louis, what are you doing?” asks Harry, but Louis doesn’t answer, just focuses on his injured hand with a crinkle of consternation in his brow. The traces of a smile that usually litter his face have been replaced with gentleness and concern.

When he releases Harry, the cut has fully scabbed over, and the skin around it is a vibrant, healing pink.

“That shouldn’t be possible,” stutters Niall, staring with his mouth open in shock, “that was an open cut a few seconds ago; this is impossible.”

The silence in the room is thick with tension. Zayn can hear Louis’ thoughts racing at a million miles per hour, as usual, and finds himself both surprised and impressed that Louis has kept this to himself since he’s met Zayn. “It’s not perfect,” says Louis, “but now he won’t need stitches.” Niall is still gaping, eyes wide and disbelieving.

“I didn’t know you could do it to other people, too,” says Harry, wonder filling his eyes as he turns his hand to see it from different angles, “that’s really cool.”

Louis shrugs. “It comes in hand-y sometimes.” Harry cracks a smile because he will always indulge Louis, even if the pun is terrible. “And it’s mostly new, anyway. Never really had anyone to practice on until now.”

Niall’s eyes flick from Harry to Louis to Zayn and back again, trying to process it all. Zayn would kill to know what’s going on in his head, but it’s as quiet as it ever is. “So, do you guys mind telling me what’s going on here, then? Because I’m completely lost, and it looks like I’m the only one that’s not in on the joke, or whatever this is, here.” He laughs, but it’s a nervous laugh, so unlike Niall that it makes Zayn’s skin crawl.

“We’re superheroes!” says Louis, and Zayn hits him in the back of the head. Louis doesn’t even flinch. “Okay, okay, we’re just regular people who can do weird things,” he amends, and then keeps going, “we have abilities. Weird, supernatural, out of the ordinary abilities. If you stabbed me with that knife, for example,” he says, gesturing toward the bloody knife lying in the sink, “it would probably take a minute or two for the wound to close, and then a few minutes after that to heal right up, as long as you didn’t pierce any particularly important organs.”

“Right,” says Niall, slowly, and his face is paler than usual.

“I can teleport,” says Harry, and then proceeds to jump from where he’s standing to directly behind Niall. “Hey, mate,” he chirps, and Niall almost falls over when he spins on his heel. 

“And you?” asks Niall when he’s gained his bearings, and he’s looking at Zayn with wild eyes, daring him to do something impressive.

Zayn really doesn’t have much to show him, just lays all his cards out onto the table. “I can read minds, usually, but I can’t read yours.”

Niall nods slowly, considering. “You know, you don’t have to feel bad if you can’t do anything like Harry and Louis. I can’t either.” It’s like he’s trying to reassure Zayn, or placate him, and while the sentiment is appreciated, Zayn also doesn’t like being made out to be a liar. 

“No,” says Zayn, insistent, “you’re the only one I’ve ever met whose thoughts I can’t hear. I wanted to tell you earlier, but I figured you wouldn’t believe me. It’s the truth, ask Harry or Louis; I can hear them fine.” The two boys both agree quietly, eyes serious to match the mood. “Niall, you are the _only_ one. I think it’s possible that you’re special, too.”

Niall has gone quiet. Harry and Louis are both thinking about the same thing, which is best translated as a single held breath, but Zayn tunes them out until all he can hear is the low hum of the refrigerator and the wind beating a tree branch against the window. “So,” Niall starts, slowly, and then bites down on his bottom lip. “You think I’m, like, immune, or something?” Zayn pulls a face that he hopes conveys _well, you might be, but I’m not exactly an expert here_. Niall looks at him very carefully and then shrugs one shoulder. “Let’s see, then.” Before anyone can stop him, he walks over to the sink, grabs the bloody knife, and cuts a clean, shallow line across the fleshy part of his palm. “Damn,” he says, eyes scrunching up as he winces, “that stings,” and then holds his hand out to Louis. “Do your worst.”

“You’re a madman,” says Louis as he closes his hands around Niall’s, but he’s grinning the way he always does when he feels fearless in the face of danger, or adventure, or whatever it is they’re doing right now. The blood on the floor, which had already started drying, is interrupted by new droplets that look all the more red compared to the stark white tiles. Louis’ grin fades, and his brows furrow together. “It’s not working, I don’t think,” he says, and he sounds confused but also frustrated. After a moment he adds, actually concerned, “Will you be fine with gauze, or do you reckon you need a hospital?”

“It’s a tiny cut,” scoffs Niall, “can barely feel it; I don’t need a hospital.” And then, quieter, “do you really think it’s me? Like, it’s my fault it’s not working? I mean, my mum always told me I was special, but this is a whole new level of weird, even for me.”

It’s enough to break the tension, and the lines in Zayn’s shoulders relax enough for him to breathe properly again.

“I’ll get you some antiseptic,” says Harry. It’s a testament to how much time they spend in this flat that he doesn’t even need to ask where it is, just traipses over to the bathroom and starts digging through the medicine cabinet.

Niall is still looking at his hand, forehead tight with an emotion Zayn wishes he could name. 

…

One day, Niall looks at Zayn and asks, “What if we could help people?”

“What do you mean?” Zayn answers, barely looking up from his book.

“Like, what if we can do these things for a reason? What if we’re meant to try to help people, or save them, or fix something that’s broken?”

Zayn puts the book down and looks Niall right in the eyes, refuses to let himself waver. “Tried that, long time ago. Now my family’s dead. We’re not heroes. This isn’t some movie. We’re not supposed to stand out.” It’s firm and cruel and meant to stop the conversation in its tracks. He gets a sick kind of satisfaction from watching Niall try to process the information without flinching. He doesn’t talk about it much, but his past isn’t full of acceptance and happiness and sunshine. There’s a reason he hasn’t touched a comic book since the 11th grade even though they were always his favorite. There’s a reason he doesn’t have a lot of friends, and there’s a reason he generally doesn’t like to let people get close to him.

“Whatever happened,” says Niall, always so painfully well intentioned, “I’m sure it wasn’t your fault.”

Zayn fights the urge to roll his eyes, just sits very still and counts his breaths. “You don’t know anything about what happened, or about me.” He hasn’t felt so full of undiluted anger in months and months. It simmers under his skin.

“I know that you’d never hurt anyone on purpose.” After a pause, he continues. “And I know you seem like the type of person to blame themselves for something that they couldn’t change. You’re a good person, Zayn. I’ve known you long enough to notice that, at least.”

“Leave it,” Zayn says quietly, looking down, “please, just leave it.”

And Niall, steady, unreadable Niall, nods once, claps Zayn softly on the shoulder, and sits next to him on the couch. They sit there in silence as the sun sets, and Zayn tries to wrap his head around everything that was said.

It keeps him up that night. It keeps him up most nights after, too.

…

Niall gets Harry and Louis on his side, and it takes Zayn a while to realize that they’re waiting on him, for some reason. Like his vote is the deciding factor when it comes to using their abilities to do some good.

If he couldn’t hear Harry and Louis thinking all the time, he’d have a hard time believing how much they trust him.

It’s that, in the end, that clinches it, even if he’s still skeptical and undeniably terrified. “No costumes,” he says. “I’m not wearing tights or some ridiculous mask or something; that isn’t happening.” And the other boys start cheering before he’s even finished speaking.

“We could do so much good,” says Harry, and his hair is getting long again, framing his face and falling in wild curls, “even if it’s just one person. Even if it’s just one time that we can help someone.”

“Sap,” says Louis, and then jumps on his back, hollering for him to take a lap around the flat.

Children, thinks Zayn, smiling, and then he slows down, thinks it again. Children. They’re so young, all of them, and here they are celebrating because they get to put themselves in danger for the common good, whatever that is at any given moment, or whatever they believe it is. He’s seen this before. It doesn’t end well. Niall sends him a questioning glance, but Zayn just shakes his head, forces himself to hold the smile before it drops off of his face and shows just how scared he really is. There’s already a sick curl of dread twisting in his gut. _Please_ , he thinks, and tries not to let it spill right out of him, _please don’t let any of them die_.

…

It turns out that saving the world isn’t quite as simple as they thought it would be. Between the four of them, they have virtually no way to weaponize their abilities, so they’re mostly stuck practicing defensive maneuvers. They’ve done a few good deeds, like when Louis surreptitiously healed a young boy’s skinned knees on the playground, or when Harry jumped four blocks to help an elderly woman cross the street, but they aren’t living the lives of superheroes by any means.

True to form, Louis is impatient. “Where are all the super villains when you need them?” he asks, tapping his foot against Zayn’s leg where they’re reclining on the floor. Harry’s in class and Niall is at work, so this is how Zayn and Louis usually spend their Fridays: lounging around in Zayn’s flat doing absolutely nothing.

Zayn snorts. “What’re you going to do, heal them to death?”

Louis sticks his tongue out. “At least I can take a hit. You fall over whenever there’s a strong wind, let alone someone pushing you.”

“Oi, shut it.” Louis doesn’t, and Zayn decides he needs to defend his dignity by starting a scuffle. Zayn is stronger, but Louis is slippery and squirmy and hard to pin down, so they’re very nearly an even match. They’re rolling over each other laughing, each trying to grab the other’s wrist, when Harry bursts in through the door, eyes wild.

“Something’s happened,” he says, out of breath, practically vibrating with energy. “We need to- we need to go, come on, get up!”

Harry’s thoughts are all just as frantic and confusing as his announcement. “What’s happened, Harry?” asks Louis, gentle and soft the way he only really is with Harry.

Harry just shakes his head, cheeks flushed and hair tossing wildly with the movement. “We need to go. Now.”

Zayn catches _if we don’t get there right now then the situation could get worse and someone could get hurt come on come on come on_ , and it’s all he needs to hear to drag Louis to his feet and rush to Harry’s car, heart pounding loud in his chest.

…

The situation turns out to be a boy around Zayn’s age with sandy brown hair, impressive biceps, and a complete lack of control over the beams of energy shooting from his hands.

“That’s Liam,” murmurs Harry once they step out of the car. “He’s in my music production course and almost killed our professor today, nearly knocked his head right off his body.” The parking lot is wide and mostly empty, thankfully, but the boy (Liam, apparently) is creating what is essentially a crater of destruction stretching out to cover a nearly thirty-meter radius. Zayn doesn’t doubt he could do more damage than he is, hopes for everyone’s sake that the kid is holding back on purpose.

Zayn looks him over. “Doesn’t seem like the violent type, honestly.”

_They never do_ , thinks Harry, and Zayn rolls his eyes but smiles. Always was one for the melodrama, Harry, probably got it from Louis in the first place. “We need to stop him,” he says, out loud this time, and Zayn nods solemnly.

“I reckon I can get close enough to talk to him,” says Louis, and Zayn immediately thinks it’s a bad idea.

He looks at Liam, who has managed to overturn another vehicle, and then back at Louis. “Just because you’ll heal doesn’t mean it won’t hurt, you realize that, right?” he asks, trying to keep the hardness out of his voice. He mostly succeeds.

Louis’ mouth twists, but he remains otherwise calm and collected. “I realize that, yeah. But we need to stop him before someone gets seriously hurt, or worse – when do classes get out, usually, Harry?”

Harry checks his watch. “We have a quarter hour, maybe a little bit more.”

“That settles it, then, I’m going in.” He takes a step toward Liam, who hasn’t noticed their presence yet, and laughs, turns halfway back. “Niall is going to be so mad that he missed this.” And then he’s off.

Zayn tries to get a read on Liam, listening carefully, and for a moment he thinks that this is going to be just like Niall all over again, feels his blood run cold. After a beat, though, he realizes why he couldn’t hear Liam: his thoughts are an endless string of words repeating over and over until they almost sound like static. _Stop stop no stop control yourself get it together stop stop it stop you could hurt someone no no stop please stop_ and the desperation and frustration hits Zayn like a punch to the gut. He is holding back, like Zayn suspected. That’s a good thing, means maybe they can reason him out of it, or calm him down, or whatever they’re supposed to do in this kind of situation. He can’t imagine how frightening it would be, to wreck everything around you even though you’re trying not to, to have so much power at your disposal but no way to control it.

“Hey!” shouts Louis, now much closer to Liam, “Mate! We’re gonna need you to stop doing that!”

Liam turns around, and before anyone can blink Louis’s entire body is slamming into a car door ten meters from where he was originally standing. “Sorry!” yells Liam, and then he curses a bit. _How do I turn these off?_ he thinks, a bit manic, staring at his hands, and Zayn has to muffle a laugh as a cough because this boy is dangerous but apparently also rather endearing.

Zayn looks to his left to try to formulate a new plan, but he should’ve known Harry would jump straight to Louis. They’re probably regrouping over by the car, but Zayn isn’t going to wait for them to figure something out. He might be a bit more fragile than Louis, but maybe he can talk Liam down, respond to his thoughts, something like that. It’s worth a shot, anyway.

He takes a few steps toward the swirling vortex of chaos (aka, where Liam is currently standing) and ducks behind a light pole. “Liam!” he calls, and tries not to flinch when the boy turns around, looks at the ground and bides his time. When he’s determined that he’s not about to die, Zayn peeks around the pole. “Hi,” he says, stupidly, because Liam is just staring at him and growing increasingly alarmed, and Zayn doesn’t actually have a plan of action, here, beyond minimizing damage.

“Erm, hi,” answers Liam, clearly struggling to control himself, “that’s probably not a good place to stand,” and he overturns a sign behind him, sending it flying, and Zayn tries not to think about that potentially being his own body, “since I, uh, am, well…having a bit of trouble, here.”

Zayn takes the opportunity to creep closer, hiding behind a bicycle rack this time. If Harry’s right, they have less than ten minutes at this point to get Liam out of here, hopefully without any more cars being overturned in the process. “We want to help you,” says Zayn, and he has to shout less loudly this time, “but you need to calm down, yeah? Take a breath.”

He can hear Harry and Louis’ thoughts on the other side of the wall of cars as a dull buzz – they’re probably talking to each other by the sound of it, both nervous for Zayn but hopeful that this will work. Zayn feels the same way.

“Right,” says Liam, trying to shake his body into submission, but he merely succeeds in very nearly decapitating Zayn. “Sorry, sorry, I don’t know how to stop it. It’s never been this bad before.” His fists clench and unclench, and Zayn definitely does not ogle his arm muscles while it happens, no, he does not do that. That would potentially compromise the mission (because apparently this is a mission, now that they’re all playing superhero), and Zayn is nothing if not professional, usually.

Liam’s thoughts are jumbled, but they clear up a bit when Zayn is speaking to him, so he keeps talking. “There you go; you’re doing better, just relax a bit. Remember to breathe. See, you’re calming down already, Liam; you’re doing really good.” Zayn isn’t usually great at the whole rambling thing, but he had younger sisters growing up, and he used to absolutely dote on them, so soft underneath all of the leather and cigarettes, and he knows how to comfort people well enough if he’s in the right mindset.

Liam’s chest is rising and falling steeply, but his breathing seems to have slowed down. “There you go,” says Zayn, standing up and walking over to Liam. His thoughts have narrowed down to _breathe, breathe, breathe_ , and Zayn should probably be on his guard a bit more, but he feels like Liam has gotten himself more or less under control. “All right?” he asks, now only a few steps from the other boy.

Harry and Louis stand as well, and start making their way over very, very slowly. Louis doesn’t look any worse for the wear for having been bodily slammed into a car. If anything, Harry is the one that looks shaken, but they can deal with that later.

Liam falls into a crouch, head in his hands, and then looks up at Zayn. “Yeah, good, thank you.” Then his eyes go sharp, like he’s remember something, and Zayn knows what he’s going to ask before he even says it. “How did you know my name?”

“I can read minds,” he says, flippant, figuring he can play it off as a joke if he needs to, “and my mate Harry is in your music production course, apparently.”

Liam laughs like he isn’t sure if he’s being made fun of or not, a small, uncertain thing that makes Zayn’s stomach twist. And then Liam thinks something about Zayn being so attractive it’s almost offensive, and Zayn doesn’t blush easy, but he can feel himself coloring to the roots, finds himself grateful that his darker complexion hides the worst of it. “Wasn’t kidding about the mind reading thing,” he says, because he feels the need to clarify, and he can hear Liam’s thoughts stumble over themselves. “If you want, I can tell you more about it back at mine and Harry’s flat?” He can’t help but curve it into a question.

“Yeah, that would be good, I think, thanks, good plan. I probably shouldn’t be out ‘n about anyway, in this state. Thanks.” Liam is looking at his feet, but he’s biting his lip around a smile.

“’Course,” answers Zayn, easy as anything, and the four of them pile into Harry’s car. Zayn was worried that there might be awkward silence, or that Liam might accidentally kill all of them, but he probably should’ve known better. Liam is completely calm, now. He apologizes to Louis about a hundred times; Harry tries to small talk about the class they share; Louis is an absolute pest, and Zayn is just trying to keep up with it all.

“Do you reckon,” asks Louis, when they’re very nearly back to the flat, “if I caught you off guard, you would accidentally, like, shred this car to pieces, without meaning to? Like if I poked you when you weren’t looking or something?”

Liam genuinely takes a moment to think about it. “Don’t think so,” he says, “at least, I hope not, maybe don’t try it right now.”

Louis doesn’t look deterred, but he also doesn’t try to goad Liam into hulking out, so Zayn counts it as a win.

Niall is tinkering around on his guitar when they get back, sitting at the table. “Zayn’s adopted another one of us,” sings Louis, practically skipping into the kitchen, “our little band of magical do-gooders has a new addition, and he can flip cars over without touching them!”

Liam looks startled. Niall just grins, because he’s probably never met a human being he couldn’t put at ease, and kicks his feet up, setting the guitar down next to him. “Hey, I’m Niall. Ignore Louis; he’s just starved for attention.”

“I’m not starved for attention; how dare you?” Louis is indignant. This is not an abnormal occurrence, and Zayn just heaves a long-suffering sigh. Harry snickers because he will always indulge Louis and runs a soothing hand through the older boy’s hair. Louis twitches but doesn't say anything.

Liam’s thoughts are dazed and confused, but he introduces himself politely, anyway. “I’m Liam, nice to meet you.” He and Niall shake hands, and Liam still looks uneasy, but he does look less likely to bolt the more time goes by. Zayn counts that as a win, too, and then wonders exactly what happened to his standards for social encounters. “So, Zayn, you said you could read minds? And then Louis said something about a secret society, or something? I mean, you guys saw what I did out there, if there’s some kind of club for figuring this out, then…uh, that’d be a good thing; I’d like to be a part of that.”

“It’s not a club,” says Zayn, “or, like, a secret society, or whatever Louis called it earlier. We’re just mates who have weird abilities, s’all. I can hear peoples’ thoughts, yeah, and Harry can teleport, and Louis basically doesn’t break. But we’re not experts.”

“Yeah,” adds Harry, “we usually have no idea what we’re doing.”

Louis huffs a laugh. “Nice sell, Harold, real convincing there.”

Harry pouts, and Liam looks a little heartbroken. He recovers quickly, though, expressions flitting across his face until he settles into something neutral. “Niall, what’s your…thing?”

“Not sure,” says Niall, loose and easy as he kicks his heels up onto the chair in front of him. “Zayn can’t hear my thoughts; Louis can’t heal me, and Harry can’t use me as an anchor unless he can see me. My friend Leigh-Anne can’t tell what I’m feeling, either – she told me she’s an empath, long line of ‘em in her family, but she thought I was a robot when she first met me. Couldn’t feel a thing.” Liam’s hanging on every last word and Niall seems happy to have an audience, preening a bit. “Zayn calls it immunity. Makes sense, I guess. And you, Liam? How’d you get dragged into all of this?”

“He tried to kill me, if you can believe it,” says Louis, “bit rude, really.”

Liam is already apologizing in his head, but Niall jumps in to cut off his inevitable reply before Zayn has the chance to. “You probably deserved it, mate.”

“He didn’t,” says Liam, firmly, even a little bit aghast, and the mood in the room shifts. “My, uh, my thing,” and he stumbles over it, “is that I can shoot energy. I guess you would call it, from my hands, but I’m rubbish at controlling it. They had to stop me from basically leveling the entire parking lot. I thought for sure I’d seriously injure someone, or send them to the hospital, or worse. I couldn’t turn it off.” Niall apparently doesn’t look as shocked or as repulsed as Liam was expecting, so he pushes on. “It was awful. I didn’t know what I was doing at all, and I couldn’t stop any of it. I did hurt Louis, and I’m so sorry about that, I just. I couldn’t get it under control. Probably could’ve killed someone.”

_Oh god, I’m a monster_ , thinks Liam frantically, and it shows in the tenseness of his jaw but nowhere else, and Zayn’s protective instinct rushes to the surface full force. “You’re not,” he says, looking right at Liam, urging him to understand, and all eyes are on him. And yeah, it might be a bit of a confusing statement to anyone but Liam, but he needs to say this, “it wasn’t your fault; you didn’t want to hurt anyone. You didn’t end up hurting anyone who couldn’t handle it, anyway.” Louis waves a little from where he’s standing. “Yeah, it was scary, but you pulled it together. You’re not a monster. You’re _not_.” Zayn is surprised at how fervent he sounds, but he means it from the bottom of his heart. He’s known Liam for all of an afternoon, but he believes in him. He believes that Liam would never hurt anyone on purpose, or lose control without first trying desperately to rein it back in. 

Liam looks like a deer caught in headlights, stiff. “So you really can read minds, then,” he answers, which is not exactly the response Zayn was looking for, but Louis laughs and claps him on the back.

“He’s good at it, too,” says Louis, “nosy bastard that he is.”

Zayn socks him in the shoulder, Harry agrees, and Niall says, “Never bothered me, for one.”

Liam laughs again, a little steadier than before, and Zayn thinks that maybe, possibly, this crazy thing they’ve got going could actually work out.


	2. LOUIS/HARRY

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> POV switch signified by ///

After word gets out about the way they helped Liam, they develop a bit of a reputation. 

It’s just gaining some contacts, at first, kids like them with strange abilities that don’t know what exactly they’re supposed to do with them. Leigh-Anne has some girlfriends she introduces to Niall, and he introduces them to the other boys. Perrie (who mysteriously seemed to already know Zayn), with her literally glass-shattering scream, is especially memorable, but they’re all lovely and interesting, and they promise to keep in touch. Next, a boy Zayn works with tells him to avoid Wilshire Boulevard on the way home because there’s going to be an accident in a few hours. He says it with a bashful look on his face, like he’s sure Zayn is going to ignore him, or call him names, but Zayn takes it in stride the way he’s so good at doing. The boy’s name is Ashton, and he saves Zayn about fifteen minutes on his short commute, and he’s got a healthy dose of precognition in his bloodstream. Ashton has some friends, too, and they meet Calum, Luke, and Michael who can more or less shape shift into anyone he likes but prefers to use his ability to mess with the color of his hair.

There are others, too, but none of them seem to stick around. They all have separate lives that don’t involve stepping in whenever someone loses control or needs a helping hand to get back on their feet. Louis understands it. He couldn’t live like that, handing off the responsibility to someone else, but he understands. 

Sometimes, though, they get calls to fight. 

The first time it happened, Louis was the only one that didn’t balk. “Come on,” he’d said, “lads, this is our chance. We said we wanted to do something, so let’s do something!”

“This isn’t fun and games,” Zayn had answered, exactly like Louis had expected him to, “we’ve never done anything like this before. It’s dangerous.”

Liam nodded, taking Zayn’s side. (He always does that, and Louis makes sure to think about it very loudly whenever Zayn is around just to bother him.) “I’m not sure I trust myself not to hurt anyone, to be honest. What if I go to help and end up taking one of you boys out?”

“Then we regroup, and we fix it!”

Harry had shaken his head. “And if it isn’t you? If it’s Niall that gets thrown against a building, then what? You can’t save everyone, Louis.”

Louis scoffed, and then crossed his arms, and tried to convey exactly how upset he was without looking like a child throwing a tantrum, because this was genuinely ridiculous. “You can’t save anyone if you don’t try.”

Surprisingly, or unsurprisingly, depending on how you looked at it, it had been Niall that stepped up to defend him. “Louis’ right. If what Ashton said is true, we only have until this evening to get to the office and stop it from burning down. And if you guys don’t want to go, fine, but I’m with Louis.” He turned his chin up and dared the other boys to say anything. “I’m not scared.”

The silence had been thick and stifling. At that moment, Louis would have given anything to have Zayn’s power, to know what people were thinking.

“If there’s anything I can do to help, I’ll do it.” Liam had been looking at his hands, twisting them in front of his body, but his posture was rigid and full of certainty. It’d been nearly a month since the first time Liam had gotten his powers to work the way he wanted, and he still had some slip ups. But he’s also the kind of person that works well (better, even) under pressure, and Louis was not worried that he’d have any kind of problem controlling himself in the field.

Louis grinned. “There’s a lad. Harry?”

Harry’s mouth was pressed into a thin, whitening line. “I’m in.”

All eyes turned to Zayn, the way they always do. Louis likes to fancy himself the leader of the group, but he knows it’s just in name, just in silly matters. When things are serious and heavy and people need guidance, it’s always Zayn, with his dark eyes and smoky past that he refuses to open up about, and the way he brought all of them together. It’s his sunshine smile, too, and his reckless enthusiasm, and his wide-open heart. They all trust Zayn with their lives. Each other, too, but Zayn is the one who has seen loss, who has to live with it, who would put his life on the line over and over before letting anything touch the rest of them. Louis knew all this, back then, but he knows it even better now.

Zayn’s acquiescence was quiet and a little pained, but it happened all the same.

…

That night, they met Cher, and she nearly killed the lot of them. 

It took a combination of all five of them to get her away from the building without letting it burn to the ground, Harry jumping as quickly as he ever has to distract her and the others moving in as close as they dared. Louis sustained three surface burns and one deeper one that took over a day to disappear from his body – he winces sometimes just remembering the way he could feel his skin stitching itself back together, the crawling sensation right under the surface. 

She’s a friend now, thankfully. He can’t think of anyone who would want her as an enemy.

When they got back to their base (it’s really just Harry’s stepdad’s cabin, but it’s roomy enough for all of them and calling it a base makes them feel official, like they’re doing something, like they could go beyond just pretending to be heroes), Zayn was shaking so badly he could hardly stand.

“Zayn, mate, what’s going on?” Liam had asked, wide-eyed and earnest, unfurling the way he only really does around Zayn, even after the slow months of acclimating to the group as a whole; Zayn always did have a soft spot for the boy. And then again, softer, “Hey, we won. We’re fine. What’s wrong?”

Zayn would probably have just flipped off anyone else, but instead he took a deep, shuddering breath, and answered. “Don’t like fire, that’s all. I’m okay.”

They left it at that, and pretended not to see the tears smudging his eyes later that evening, or hear the way he whimpered in his sleep. His hands were trembling so loudly they almost had a sound, but no one made to touch him. Zayn keeps his tragedies private. He gets quiet sometimes, probably doesn’t even realize he does it, but the rest of them notice.

Louis could’ve stuck around, tried to coax a smile out of Zayn, but even the thought of trying to do that was daunting, and Zayn can see right through him, anyway. One thought out of line, and he was a goner.

It sounded more exhausting the more he thought about it, and instead of meddling, he decided to jump on Liam’s back and demand that he take a lap around the flat. Liam, bless him, ran with it, and the night devolved into dewdrops and melancholy and stars.

…

Louis is nearing 22 now, which is ridiculous, because he swears he was a teenager like, last month. Despite his old age, however, he’s still a consistent bundle of energy and sunshine, and he drags the boys out to a new pub every month to “get a taste of what’s out there,” and also to remind them how fun he is. Because Louis is really, really fun, and he doesn’t like for people to forget that about him.

They let him drag them because they love him, and also because they like pubs. It’s a win-win situation, really. 

The pub of the night is called Fool’s Gold, and they’ve supposedly got the best pints in the city. “Louis, you tell us that about every pub we go to. They can’t all have the best pints in the city.” Zayn’s teasing, but Louis feels the need to defend himself regardless.

“No, no, this place definitely is the best.”

“You say that every time, too,” counters Harry, and Louis turns on him, unbuckling his own seatbelt and using the new range of motion to pin Harry to the back seat of the car and tickle him until he swears to never doubt Louis again. Harry is very ticklish, and Louis may or may not abuse that fact more often than he should. It’s just that he can’t help it if Harry is exceptionally cute and easy to convince when he’s flushed and giggly.

“Ugh,” says Zayn, “please, stop; you two are nauseating.”

Louis leans forward and flicks Zayn on the nose. “Don’t be jealous, babe, doesn’t suit you,” he answers, and raises his eyebrows at Zayn like a challenge.

The car pulls up to the pub before he can launch a counterattack, which is probably for the better, though Louis would never admit it. Mind reading is definitely an unfair advantage when it comes to arguments, and Zayn has gotten so good at reading Louis in the past two years that he doesn’t usually stand a chance, not that he doesn’t try.

Inside, it’s dark and full of smoke and more than a little seedy looking. The tables are full of middle-aged men watching rugby on the small screens that litter the place, and the wood of the bar is dull and covered in nicks and scratches. “Great pick, Louis,” deadpans Niall, “really, this place is top notch.” But he slides up to the counter and orders a drink all the same, making conversation with the bartender. 

Harry and Zayn wander off to join him, and Louis sits at a table with Liam because Liam doesn’t drink (something about his kidney, he said, but Louis is skeptical, thinks maybe there are other reasons, hasn’t pried yet but probably will soon), and Louis is certain that if he has a pint or four he’ll go completely maudlin about his age or how he hasn’t seen his family in years, which was absolutely not the point of the night. “Staying sober?” asks Liam, raising his eyebrows. He looks surprised, probably because Louis is usually the one standing on tables trying to get the patrons to join him in impromptu karaoke. 

“Not feeling it tonight, really,” he answers honestly, dropping any pretense, and Liam looks thoughtful but nods. Their friendship used to be tenuous, always on the verge of snapping, but they’ve settled into something comfortable since, and Louis is grateful, needs the steadiness Liam is good at bringing into his life. It’s good, too, that he can tease Liam without worrying that he’ll take it the wrong way, that he can get right up into Liam’s space, and Liam won’t flinch away. Louis has never been good at walking on eggshells.

They chat a bit about their weeks – Liam’s classes are going well, and Louis was almost fired yesterday but managed to sweet talk his manager out of it (again) – and then Liam leaves to use the restroom. Louis kicks his feet up into the newly empty chair and takes in the surroundings, notices Harry and Niall hanging off of each other and about three decibels shy of cackling. Zayn’s flicking through something on his phone, and then he hears a voice behind him.

“Mind if I sit for a minute? My feet are killing me, ugh, dreadful shoes.” Her voice is clear and sharp – the voice of an intellectual, or a businesswoman, or maybe a lawyer. She doesn’t wait for him to answer before pulling the chair out and taking a seat. Louis’ feet fall to the floor, and he lets them. 

“Uh, sure,” he says, after the fact.

She smiles blindingly. “Well aren’t you sweet? What’s your name, love?” She has white blonde hair, sharp eyeliner, and thick, pink lipstick, and she looks older than Louis by five years, maybe ten at most.

“I’m Louis,” he answers, and she drops her high heels onto the table and pulls out a compact mirror, checking her makeup, and swinging her stocking-covered feet and listening absently.

“Wonderful,” she says, and doesn’t offer her own name. Louis doesn’t ask. Liam is still not back, and Louis is not generally awkward around strangers, but this woman has his tongue feeling numb in his mouth. He isn’t even sure why, really, but he’s gone quiet, just sort of looking at her. The silence is uncomfortable, but he doesn’t know how to break it, thinks that stringing together a sentence feels nigh impossible at the moment. He just stares. She meets his gaze coolly. “Crazy night,” she laughs, tucking a piece of hair behind her ear, “but some of the men in here are awfully nice to look at, don’t you think?” She’s looking in the direction of Niall, Harry, and Zayn, and her eyes are more calculating than they are appreciative.

He has no idea how to answer her, just shrugs and tries not to squirm under her ice-gray eyes. She laughs again, a tinkling sound, and moves to grab one of her heels. Her hand jerks at the last second, and the other shoe goes flying directly at Louis, nicking him in the arm, leaving the spot sore and tender. “Oh, dear,” she says, “I’m so sorry about that. My fault, of course, are you okay?”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m fine.” She stands up and grabs the stiletto from the ground next to him, and before he can move, she grabs his arm, too, inspecting the angry red mark where the heel dug in. It fades far slower than it should in her grip, tiny spot of blood drying over the cut, but she doesn’t say anything, just purses her lips and then releases him.

“I really do wish I weren’t so clumsy,” she tells him, ghost of smile on her face, and then she checks her watch. “Look at that, my ride will be here any second. Anyway, thanks for the company, Louis, you have a nice night, okay?”

He nods, still a bit dazed, and watches her walk away.

Liam comes back, and Louis is still processing what just happened. “Hey, mate, all right?”

He shakes himself a little and tries to snap out of it. His head feels cloudy. “Never better,” he answers, and puts the woman to the back of his mind.

Liam gives him a funny look but accepts it, and the rest of the night passes in lurches and hums. They end up having to carry Harry home after he accidentally teleports a little to the left and off of his stool. Or, well, Liam is the one that carries him, because Harry is dead weight and has long since surpassed the rest of them in terms of height, and Louis may work out on occasion but even he knows when to leave it to Liam. Louis drives them home because he’s sober for once, and spends the entire evening trying to think about things other than how unsettled he feels.

Zayn doesn’t approach him, doesn’t ask in that infuriatingly gentle tone of his if anything is wrong, and Louis guesses that that means he did a pretty good job, or maybe Zayn is still a little drunk and hasn’t bothered taking in any of their thoughts. He waits for Zayn to fall asleep, which never takes long, and then he walks out to the balcony.

He’s outside for most of the night with a pack of cigarettes and his thoughts, wondering absently if he’s at any serious risk for lung cancer or if his body would just reject a mutation and move on. By morning he’s got it out of his system, focused instead on the news report about some kid threatening to knock down a bridge just because he can, and the ground he’s standing on is already vibrating just the smallest bit.

“Boys,” says Louis, with a grin edging on manic, just the way he likes it, “we’ve got some work to do today.”

…

When they get to the bridge, there are police cars, and they all stop short. “They’ll never be able to stop him on their own,” says Louis, watching the officers approach the boy slowly with tasers in hand. “He literally thrives off of vibrations; what do they think electrocuting him will do? Slow him down?”

“You’re right,” says Harry, “it’ll just make it worse, and he doesn’t look like he’s backing down any time soon.” The kid probably still lives with his parents, spiky hair and eyebrows tilted into a furious slant, a teenager with far too much strength and no ability or willingness to rein it in.

Louis remembers being young and angry and confused, how he figured out he couldn’t get hurt when he was seven years old, and his mother made him swear not to tell a single soul. He promised her then that he’d keep it a secret unto his grave, and she smiled softly, patted him on the head and said it was for the better.

He hasn’t seen her in years.

Zayn is frowning. “He’s not going to stop at the bridge; he’s got plans to level as much of the city as he can before they take him out. He wants to go down in some blaze of glory.” He looks a little seasick, but there’s a hardness to the planes of his face that belies his stoicism about the matter.

“I’ll go talk to an officer, see if I can’t get them to back off a bit before they accidentally supercharge him. Zayn, come with me?” 

Zayn nods and picks up where Niall left off, “Liam and Louis, try and clear the way, force through if you have to. Harry, you’re up if anything goes wrong. Go right to him – be careful but stop him however you can. Everyone good?”

“Let’s do it,” says Liam, clapping his hands together in what they’ve all identified as his ‘excited to get down to business’ expression, and Louis knows his own eyes must be lit up with the same kind of eagerness. It never gets old, the rush, the sing of the fight.

Niall and Zayn go first, approaching the line of officers. Zayn walks with trepidation, but Niall saunters up like he’s known these people his entire life. With the way that boy is connected, it’s actually possible, and even if the police aren’t their biggest fans, it doesn’t mean Niall can’t win them over. They’d send Harry, too, if they could afford it, charmer that he is, but they don’t exactly have unlimited resources here. “Ten pounds say that they kick Zayn out and end up taking a selfie with Niall or something,” says Harry under his breath, and Louis is shaking his head before he’s even finished speaking.

“It wouldn’t be smart of me to take that bet, I don’t think.” He can see Niall’s megawatt smile from where they’re standing. “They might let Zayn stay, though. He’s doing better today at not looking shady.”

“Zayn doesn’t look shady,” protests Liam, jumping into the conversation.

Always so defensive of Zayn, that boy. “Liam, he literally stood slightly behind Niall while wearing a hood last time and didn’t say a single word. He kept the hood up through the entire exchange. That’s, like, the definition of shady. Why would he do that?”

“Maybe he was cold,” says Liam, and Louis can’t decide whether to laugh or keep poking fun at him. Liam and Zayn have been dancing circles around each other pretty much since they’ve met. Zayn can literally read the boy’s mind, but he refuses to accept that they’re basically already boyfriends, just without the name, and it drives the rest of the boys mad (well, it does when they’re not busy trying to save the world, and all). “Hey, I think we’re up.”

Louis looks over to see Niall trying to talk an officer out of handcuffing Zayn (“good call on not taking the bet,” mumbles Harry). “Right, let’s go then.”

“I’ll go see if Niall needs any help,” says Harry, and Louis nods, has to fight himself not to tell him to be careful. He doesn’t usually get sappy, but Harry is young and gentle and full of light and unbearably breakable, and if Louis could, he would keep him tucked out of harm’s way for as long as possible. He knows, though, that Harry can take care of himself. That he’s quick and prudent and smart. That it takes a half-blink for him to catapult himself out of danger. He knows that. Sometimes he just has to remind himself, is all.

“Ready, Tommo?”

“Born ready,” he answers, centering himself, and Liam laughs the way he always does.

Liam clears a path while trying to injure as few pedestrians and police officers as he can – it’s an impressively small number, and none of them are ever hurt seriously; Liam has gotten very good at damage control – and Louis runs behind him through the fray. He doesn’t holler at the top of his lungs as he does it, but it’s tempting.

A piece of glass tears at his sleeve and leaves a gash, but he barely feels it past the adrenaline and the knowledge that it’s taking care of itself as he runs.

The ground is shaking beneath them already. Liam blasts a lone bike out of their way, and with it a street sign and a tornado of leaves, all of which skitter a few meters away. His control has improved massively since that first day (and it feels so long ago, now, that hazy memory of a terrified boy who didn’t know how not to hurt people but tried anyway) and there are police officers shouting and chasing after them, but Louis is pretty sure he could survive a bullet in the back. He’s surreptitiously covering Liam as they go.

Ten seconds more of running and they’re standing right in front of the kid they’re meant to stop. “This can be very easy, or this can be painful,” says Louis, crossing his arms and trying to look intimidating as they walk the last few steps. 

The boy spits at Louis’ feet, and Louis sneers. Before he can retaliate, Liam braces a hand out, pointing it at the boy’s chest, and says, very calmly, “if you don’t put your hands up and allow the police to take you in peacefully, I’ll blast you straight into the river and let them drag you out of it by your hair.” When he doesn’t get an answer, he releases enough energy to push the boy back a half meter or so, and asks, “Do you understand me?”

Harry appears next to them and tries not to let on that he’s about a minute late to the exchange. “You’re surrounded,” he says, and the boy’s eyes are wide as they dart around. They keep coming back to Liam, though, and his hand, probably thinking about how likely he is to drown if he ends up flying off of this bridge.

He clenches his jaw but puts his hands on his head. The bridge stops vibrating. Louis smiles an ugly, vindictive smile and lets Harry lead him away by the elbow, Liam following close behind after he’s made sure that the boy is safely tucked into a police car. The three of them meet up with Niall and Zayn (Niall having successfully talked the officer out of arresting Zayn, thankfully), and they slip away quickly before they can be questioned by anyone. They have avoiding the police down to a science at this point, only staying long enough to neutralize a threat and then getting the hell out of dodge. “Not bad, Payno,” says Louis, “didn’t know you had it in you.”

Liam shrugs, unbothered. “He didn’t have a choice but to give himself up in the end, did he?”

“Not after your little speech, he didn’t. I think even I was a little scared of you after that, to be honest.”

Liam shoves at him playfully with his shoulder, and Louis drops it, laughing quietly. They pile into the car one by one, and Louis finds himself in the middle seat, as usual, sandwiched between Niall and Harry. All in all, not the worst place to be, but it would be nice to have a bit more leg room every once in a while.

“We’re not half bad at this, are we?” asks Harry, and everyone in the car groans simultaneously.

“Harry, you literally say that every time we finish a mission. Yes, we’re good at this, we know. Amazing, even. Proper superheroes, or, like, vigilantes with a craving for justice. I feel like we need a team name, or something, make it official.” He’s already coming up with ideas as he says it, trying to think of something that’s flashy but also commands respect. “Like, United Against Villainy!”

“Bit of a mouthful, innit?” asks Zayn. Louis sticks his tongue out because he’s a mature adult.

“Then, Villain Crushers! Or, or- Evil Killers!”

“Like, killers of evil? Or, evil people that are also killers? I feel like that could be confusing.”

Unfortunately, Liam has a point. Louis looks out the window so he doesn’t have to see Zayn’s smirk, and then stops looking out the window because he refuses to be beaten at his own game. Louis has a competitive streak a mile wide, and he is absolutely willing to use that to his advantage.

Niall jumps in with, “The Backstreet Boys!” and the car is silent for about two seconds until it erupts into sound again.

“Which of us is from the backstreets?” asks Liam, raising his voice to be heard above the laughter and general clamor. “Also, the backstreets of what?”

“How about just: the Allies?” asks Louis, and he’s quite chuffed about that one, rather likes it, but he’s shot down because of course he’s shot down; what else is new. 

It’s Zayn again, the wanker. “Makes us sound like we’re in World War II.”

“Kind of does, mate.” Liam sounds apologetic.

Louis shoots back with: “What would you know about world history?”

Liam looks indignant. “I’m in school right now! I go to uni! I know some things, sometimes!”

“That’ll be on your tombstone. Liam Payne: he knew some things, sometimes.” Louis can’t keep the laughter from spilling into his voice.

“That’s true, it is, be careful, Liam,” Niall agrees, affecting a ridiculously posh British accent for no apparent reason, and Louis laughs loudly, and then they’re all interrupted by a quiet, steady voice.

“One Direction,” says Harry, his first contribution, and he looks awfully thoughtful. “’Cause, like, we do things our own way, but we’re all on the same page. We want to do the right thing. So even if, say, the police disagree, or other people think we’re wrong, we’ll always be going in our own direction based on what we know is right.”

The silence has a gravity to it, but the tension is loaded with promise rather than dread, and Louis can feel his mouth turning up at the corners, helpless not to. “’S not bad,” says Zayn quietly, and the others nod one by one.

“Any objections?” asks Louis, unnecessarily, and there are none. “That settles it, then.”

“We’re One Direction,” says Harry, goofy grin lighting up his face.

Louis laces their fingers together and taps the top of Harry’s hand with his thumb. “Yeah,” he agrees, rolling it around in his head and finding he rather likes the sound of it, “we are.”

///

The first hint that anything is wrong outside of the usual occasional deviant is the fact that Nick isn’t answering his phone.

On a normal day, this wouldn’t be a huge deal, but Harry was supposed to get dinner with him last night to catch up and Nick never showed, or bothered to mention why he didn’t show, and now he isn’t answering his phone. It’s confusing, is what it is, because usually he’s, like, attached to it at the thumbs – Harry yells at him all the time to unplug, so if this is some kind of prank in retaliation he will reserve the right to be put out about it for weeks (but also relieved, probably, because there’s a niggling thread of worry working its way up from his stomach, and he’d rather quash that sooner than later).

He knows his thoughts are getting frantic, but for all Harry tries to be laid back, he’s a worrier at heart. The last time he assumed everything was okay, his sister nearly died in a car accident, so he tends to err more toward the side of concern nowadays.

(And even now he remembers how he’d found his sister lying on the side of the road, face twisted up in pain and her shoulder stuck at an unnatural angle, asking him why he wouldn’t answer her calls – and then, when he apologized, and she said she forgave him, he thought things were fine, but her eyes rolled to the back of her head before the paramedics even had time to arrive. He nearly lost her there, and it’d been the most agonizing ten minutes of his life waiting with her under the boiling summer sun. He hasn’t forgiven himself, he doesn’t think. Not yet, at least, though it’s been nearly four years now. He could’ve answered the phone, could have found her sooner, could have called the emergency line the second he saw her face. There are so many ways he could’ve done better, and he tries to, these days; he is always trying to do better.)

He goes to dial again, but a warm hand closes over his own and holds him still. “He’s fine,” says Zayn, and gently pries the phone from Harry’s grasp. “Don’t worry so much. I could hear you thinking from outside.” When Harry doesn’t look up, Zayn sighs. “Hey, I’m sure he’s okay. There are lots of reasons he could be away from his phone.”

“He always answers,” Harry says, and his voice comes out very small. “He missed dinner and now.” He has a hard time finishing the sentence, so he just decides not to. The worry in his stomach is growing into panic, and he has the most sinister feeling that something’s gone horribly wrong.

Zayn nods, looking thoughtful. “Maybe you could go check on him, just jump over to his house really quick, see if he’s there. Might make you feel better.”

Harry takes a deep breath, feels his chest rise and fall and uses the motion to ground himself. He shoves a hand through his messy curls and finally lets himself look away from his hands. “Yeah, that’s a good idea.” It wouldn’t hurt anyone to just pop by really quickly; if Nick doesn’t want him there for whatever reason he can just jump right back and no one would even have to notice he was ever there at all. “I’ll see you later, then.”

“See you,” echoes Zayn, and then Harry’s gone.

He shuts his eyes, focuses on his destination, and lets a thread of intent tug him to where he wants to be. It’s more instinctual than anything else these days, and it helps when he’s going somewhere he’s been before.

The jump to Nick’s flat is easy and familiar. Harry’s made it countless times for miscellaneous movie nights or get-togethers or parties; he’s well acquainted with what Nick’s flat looks like at any time of the day, which is why it takes him a minute to comprehend exactly what it is he’s seeing.

On a normal day, Nick’s flat is neat and minimalistic, indicative of how little time he spends there between work and his social life. Harry is expecting as much, because nothing here ever really changes, right down to the bowl of fake fruit that usually sits on the granite countertop in his small, streamlined kitchen.

This is not a normal day.

The first thing Harry notices is that the coffee table is overturned. Once he processes that, the rest of the scene comes rushing at him. Fake fruit is lying every which way, there’s a rip in the couch, papers from the desk are scattered across the floor; there are scuff marks on the tile by the door, a window is open, and the door is unlocked and nearly ajar. This is a crime scene. There are no traces of Nick anywhere.

Harry rushes into the bedroom, then the small office, then the bathroom, thinking that if he can just find a clue…but the search is hopeless, and he just finds more signs of struggle. Whatever happened here must have lasted a long time, and it looks like it was ugly.

As he’s rummaging around in the medicine cabinet, he hears the front door open, and his blood freezes.

Of course someone would come back, what was he thinking; it was entirely stupid to come here alone. Zayn still has his phone, so Harry can’t call anyone or even text, and Zayn’s the only one who knows where he is – and anyway, if there’s a killer here, Harry doesn’t want anyone coming after him.

His mind is still racing when he hears footsteps right outside of the bathroom. He holds his breath.

“Harry? You still here, mate?” All of the air rushes from his lungs at once, and he almost laughs with how relieved he feels.

“Ashton?”

The door to the bathroom creaks open. “Yeah. I wasn’t sure if you’d still be here, thought you’d have jumped out the second you heard me.” And oh, right, Harry can teleport. Somehow in all the madness he forgot that he could’ve just vaulted himself clear out of the way. “I came as quick as I could, but I was obviously too late.” Ashton runs a hand through his hair (it’s getting long, now, falling back over his face no matter what he does), and Harry notices the bags under his bloodshot eyes and the grim set of his jaw. “I thought-“ he stops, clears his throat, “I thought I could stop it.”

“Stop what?” asks Harry, mouth dry, because Ashton must have seen this, or felt it, or whatever happens to him that he knows the future.

Ashton takes a deep and shuddering breath. “They took him,” he says, and every line of his body is draped in exhaustion, but he’s vibrating like he had six espresso shots before coming here. “He tried to get away, but they were stronger; they were so much stronger, and his power doesn’t really work for self defense. If anything, he made it easier for them.”

“Who’s they?” He’s trying to stay calm, look at the facts, and stop his heartbeat from racing too loudly, but it’s hard when they’re standing in what looks like a hurricane.

“I’m not sure. It was all cloudy when I saw it – it’s not usually like that, but when it came earlier it was like it was coming through a fog. Almost made me dizzy to try and focus on it.” He looks dizzy, and a little sick, and extraordinarily run down. Harry wants to make him tea and sit him down and force him to get some rest, but he himself feels like a live wire, like an exposed nerve, like he’s running at a million kilometers an hour. He can’t just sit here. They have to do something.

He starts pacing around the room, fighting to keep his hands out of his hair. “Do you know where they went? Can you see that?”

“I can’t see where they are,” says Ashton, slowly, like an idea is dawning on him, “but I can see where they will be. I mean, I think I can.”

“Try,” urges Harry. “Please.” It’s funny, because he and Nick are good friends, but in the grand scheme of things, they aren’t even that close, really. It’s just that Harry has a big heart, and he can’t help but care when people are in danger or they could get hurt or maybe even die (but he doesn’t want to think about that possibility right now – he can’t if he wants to stay sane). Bleeding heart, Louis always calls him. He isn’t wrong.

It takes a few anxious moments, and Harry can feel his heartbeat on his tongue, but Ashton looks up with a spark in his tired, tired eyes, and says, “I got it.”

He rattles off an address, and Harry rushes to write it down, grabs the closest things he can find and scribbles the numbers haphazardly. “You’re sure?” he asks, because they can’t afford any mistakes here.

“I’m sure,” Ashton confirms, and Harry takes a breath and steels himself.

“Let’s go.”

…

They drive for an hour, Harry growing more and more antsy as time ticks by, but it isn’t as if he can carry Ashton along while he jumps – they’ve tried it before, with any and every combination of people, and the closest he ever got was the time he was holding Niall’s sweater too tightly and ended up jumping with it still in his hand, leaving Niall shirtless back at the base. And anyway, they have no idea what’s waiting for them, and they have a better chance of making it out with Nick if they present a united front. Harry is quick, but he’s not much of a fighter.

When they roll up to the building, Ashton doesn’t look surprised. That makes sense, at least – he saw this, knew what it would look like. Harry, on the other hand, was expecting something more innately sinister, like an abandoned warehouse or a dark shed with rotting wood and a little watchtower on top.

The sleek office building with its large windows is intimidating in a different way.

“Looks so innocent,” says Harry, “like, scary, but innocent.” Ashton hums in agreement, and they pass together through the heavy revolving door. The receptionist is a young man who looks like a university student on an internship, and his smile is disarming. The desk he’s sitting behind is wide, black, and full of sharp angles, separating them from him with an expanse of thick granite. The nervous feeling in Harry’s gut is coming back, and he tries to focus on what’s important: finding Nick and getting him out of here. The further they go on this ridiculous mission, however, the more Harry’s nerves rear up. He’s not used to doing this kind of thing without his boys, and something tells him that this is far bigger than whatever delusional kid of the week they’ve been dealing with as a team for the past year or so.

The receptionist looks at them carefully. His teeth are perfect and white. “You’ll want to go to the third floor,” he says, still smiling, “there’s someone expecting you. You’re very lucky,” he adds, almost conspiratorially, “it’s so hard to get an appointment with the boss without calling in advance.”

“Thanks,” says Ashton, looking a little dazed. Harry feels the same way.

They exchange a glance. “Are we going to do this?” asks Harry, because he needs the reassurance, but Ashton looks over his shoulder at the door, which has stopped revolving, motioning with his chin. Two men with hulking muscles are standing on either side of it, regarding them passively. Upon further inspection, Harry sees knives of some sort or another (kitchen knives? combat knives, more likely? It doesn’t really matter; either way they can’t leave, and Harry isn’t going to abandon Ashton) tucked into their belts. “Ah,” says Harry, feeling faint. “We don’t have a choice. Perfect.”

The elevator moves slowly to the third floor, and Harry can’t shake the crawling feeling that their every move is being watched – probably not an unfair assumption, seeing as they’ve walked straight into what looks like an elaborate trap.

It’s not Harry’s best moment, and he thinks for a moment that if he makes it out of here alive, the boys are going to have his hide for trying to execute such a poorly thought out plan without at least letting them know where he’s gone.

Before the doors open, Ashton turns to Harry with wide, somber eyes. “If anything happens in there, you need to get out. Jump at the first sign of danger, because I might be stuck here, but if we both get taken then we’re done for. You need to get out of here and tell whoever you can what’s happened – your boys, and mine, and the girls, too. Anyone. But don’t get yourself captured or hurt or killed because you’re trying to be brave.”

“But-“

“Because it won’t be brave,” Ashton presses on, “it’ll just be stupid, and would probably get us both killed. Let’s see what whoever called us here wants, and then we’ll try to run. Okay?”

Harry swallows hard. It feels like everything is happening too fast to process, like he’s making life or death decisions without the time to think things properly through. “Okay,” he says, because Ashton isn’t giving him a choice, and then the little bell rings, and the elevator doors are sliding open, and Harry’s heartbeat is kicking double time.


	3. ZAYN

CHAPTER 3: ZAYN

Louis is, as usual, talking shit. “I’m fine; it’s barely a scratch. Seriously, Liam, calm down and breathe for, like, thirty seconds. You’re stressing me out.”

Liam scoffs, visibly upset. “I’m stressing you out? You’re going to get yourself killed one of these days! I can see it now, you bleeding out on the ground insisting that you’re fine, and then you die, and then what?”

Louis sounds exceptionally patient when he answers, tone gentled down into something manageable. “I’m not going to die. I promise. How’s that?”

Zayn can hear both of their thoughts running in circles, and it still amazes him sometimes how absolutely in denial Louis is regarding his own mortality. He hasn’t pushed his limits too far beyond broken bones and the occasional gash, and it’s smart of him not to, but the truth is that no one really knows the extent of his healing abilities. The only way to find out would be to push his body to the point of death, which isn’t a viable option for obvious reasons. Liam shares the same concerns that all of them have – that Louis is reckless and refuses to take care of himself – but he’s the only one that brings it up this often, that will chide Louis for doing stupid things even now.

Once, ages ago, Harry screamed himself hoarse after Louis came home barely able to walk and insisting he was fine. It’s not a night either of them have been able to forget, and Zayn hears both of them thinking about it, sometimes, about the tears that mucked up Harry’s voice, and the way he yelled, and yelled, and yelled, and how Louis stood soft and pliant and just took it, the quietest he’s ever been.

Zayn stands up and walks to Liam, putting a hand on his upper arm. Some of the tension drains out of Liam immediately, and Zayn leans up a little to whisper into his ear. “Breathe, babe. Louis’ fine. He’s an idiot, but he’s fine. C’mon.” Liam nods shakily and lets Zayn lead him into his bedroom. Louis looks at Zayn as they walk out, expression tilted toward gratitude, and Zayn keeps his own face carefully blank.

They settle in on the bed, Zayn tucked into Liam’s side, and Zayn busies himself playing with Liam’s hands. “Sorry I’ve been so wound up, lately,” says Liam after a few moments, voice quiet and a half-edge rough. “Can’t help it. Feels like there’s something buzzing under my skin, or something. I can’t shake it.” He laughs, and it comes out sounding wrong and twisted. “Sounds crazy when I say it out loud.”

Zayn frowns, eyebrows pulling together. “It’s not just you,” he says, leaning his head to rest on Liam’s chest. “Louis and Harry, they- their thoughts have been more frantic lately. Just like you described. I don’t know about Niall, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he was the same way.”

Liam hums. “And you?”

“I’m okay,” says Zayn, automatic, shutters closing. He can’t help that his default setting is putting himself last, but that’s the way things are, and talking about the way his hands shake isn’t going to help anything, anyway.

In the next room, he can hear Louis and Niall talking, voices muffled by the wall in the way. Louis is thinking about electricity and blood. Liam talks again, and with the way his voice sounds, Zayn imagines his eyes must look like storm clouds. “You don’t have to pretend with me. It’s all right.”

Zayn swallows hard. “I know,” he answers, because he does, “and thank you. But I’m fine.” Liam’s thoughts don’t sound convinced at all, so he presses on. “I promise.”

And Liam still isn’t buying it, but he also seems willing to let the subject drop for the time being, pressing a kiss to the crown of Zayn’s head and leaning back against the pillows. The curtains are drawn, so the room is dark and shadowed even in the middle of the day, but the light from the lamp on the nightstand is spilling gold onto every surface. Zayn catches a flash of himself in Liam’s thoughts, all soft and rumpled and made up of rounded off angles – that’s fairly new, being able to catch images that flit through people’s heads, and it’s proven useful and also a little bit scarring that time he walked into the house while Louis was wanking in the next room.

He curls a little closer into Liam’s warmth. The boy is like a space heater most of the time, and Zayn rarely hesitates to take advantage of it. Liam just wraps his arm a little tighter around Zayn’s shoulders and rests his head on top of Zayn’s.

“It feels like something big is going to happen,” murmurs Liam, hushed. “Something we can’t stop.”

Zayn makes a sound that he hopes conveys his agreement. He doesn’t add that it feels like something that could ruin them. He doesn’t add the dread that has been pooling in his gut for days now. He doesn’t add anything about the nightmares, about waking up with each boy he can hear in turn because the screaming in his head gets so loud.

(It was Louis, last night, dreaming of being chained up like a modern day Prometheus, about wishing for death, but his wounds closed over even when it took hours and he couldn’t get away. Zayn had woken up in a cold sweat and found Louis buried under a blanket in the living room, tear tracks drying on his flushed face. He hadn’t said anything when Zayn sat next to him, and they fell asleep together on the ratty old couch without a word, hands tightly intertwined.)

Instead of vocalizing any of that, he wraps an arm around Liam’s waist and noses into the juncture of his neck and shoulder, stays there until his breathing evens out, and his muscles go lax, and he’s forgotten all about the dark cloud that has been following him around.

…

Louis wakes them up, unsurprisingly, and it takes Zayn a minute to blink himself awake, rubbing a hand over his eyes and feeling just shy of disoriented. “Where’s Harry?” he asks. Zayn’s actually surprised that he isn’t back by now.

“He went to check on Nick,” answers Zayn, and Louis pulls a face at the name. Zayn ignores it because he’s a great friend and is also not in the mood to deal with that on top of everything else. “Nick wasn’t answering his texts or something, so Harry jumped to his flat to see if everything was okay. He’s probably still there.”

Liam is stretching next to him, and Zayn can feel every point of heat where they’re touching, is having a hard time convincing himself that they can’t just crawl under a blanket and stay there all evening after wasting away the day in bed. 

“Did he not bring his phone?”

Zayn blinks, has to think about it for a minute. “I still have it. He was checking it obsessively; I think it was stressing him out too much.”

Louis nods, but he doesn’t look happy. “He’s been gone for hours, though.” His voice is as small as it ever is, still laced with that undercurrent of bravado, but Zayn can hear the fear permeating his thoughts as clearly as anything.

“He’ll be back soon,” says Zayn. He makes an effort to sound especially certain, because a concerned Liam is one thing, and a concerned Niall is another, but a genuinely concerned Louis is a Molotov cocktail of emotions and vicious intent waiting to explode, and none of them are up to dealing with that right now, if ever.

Louis bites his lip. “Yeah, I’m sure he’ll be home by dark. If not, though, I’m going out to find him.”

“Are you sure that’s a good idea?” asks Liam, his first addition to the conversation. He looks more alert now, like he’s rubbed the sleep out of his eyes by sheer power of will.

“I’ll be fine,” says Louis. “And anyway, if Harry’s in trouble, there’s not a force on this planet that could stop me, so don’t try.” 

That much is true, Zayn knows. Niall wanders into the room holding a glass of water, eyes pinched like he has a headache, but his demeanor is still as loose and easy as it always is. “What’s wrong?” he asks, because he’s good at reading rooms and because Louis has a dangerous sort of fierceness in his eyes.

Zayn answers, because Louis is more than likely to turn this into a hugely dramatic story, and Liam hasn’t really got all of the facts. “Harry’s gone to Nick’s to check on him, and he’s been gone for a while.”

Niall looks like he’s trying to hold back a half-shade of a smile. “Harry’s the freest spirit I know. He’s probably got himself caught up in a conversation about existentialism with someone he met five minutes ago, who knows.”

It’s a valid point.

They stew in silence for a bit before Niall turns to leave, mumbling about a hangover. As he’s about to walk through the door, though, his path is blocked by a person. The room collectively inhales in shock. 

He looks a right mess. There’s blood all over him, and Zayn can’t get a good enough look to be able to tell whether it’s his or someone else’s. “Are you okay?” tries Louis, too loud to be casual, but Harry has an anguished twist to his features and looks right through Louis to stare at the wall.

“Hey, mate, what’s happened?” asks Liam, aiming for gentle but coming off worried and urgent, propping himself up on his elbow like he wants to vault off of the bed and do something, fix something, make himself useful as best he can.

Harry tries to take a step forward and stumbles, only barely remains upright. He’s shaking all over, trembling so badly it’s a wonder he can even stand.

Zayn makes an involuntary hurt sound, caught off guard by the torrent of thoughts that had assaulted him the moment Harry jumped into the room. “I didn’t-” Harry starts, and trying to talk seems to be the tipping point, because before he’s even gotten the rest of the sentence out his eyes have rolled back into his head, and he’s collapsing to the floor in a graceless, unconscious heap.

The room should probably erupt into chaos given their track record as a group, but it’s eerily silent as Louis falls to his knees with a gasp next to Harry and checks him over for injuries. “It’s his head,” he says, and his voice comes out strangled and so, so wrong, “there’s a cut, it’s why he’s bleeding so much. It’s not deep. I should be able to fix it, I mean- I think- I should be able to, but it looks like he got hit pretty hard.” He pushes back Harry’s hair and hovers his hand over it, then presses down. Harry doesn’t move a muscle, and Louis’ eyes are wide. Zayn can hear the sheer terror in his thoughts, undercut by single-minded focus.

This is Zayn’s fault. The thought leaves him completely cold, and he shifts away from Liam on instinct. “I told him to go,” he whispers, sitting up and bracing his weight on his hands where they press into the bed behind him. “I took his phone, and I told him to go by himself.”

“You couldn’t have known,” says Liam.

Niall evidently agrees, though he doesn’t sound any less shaken for it. “Blaming yourself for this isn’t going to help Harry. There’s no way any of us could’ve known this would happen. Right now we need to make sure he’s okay.”

Zayn wants to snap himself out of it, but his mind is running a feedback loop of him telling Harry to leave, and then him telling Louis that everything must be fine, and then him holding Harry’s phone and assuming everything must be sunshine and peaches because apparently he’s in denial that anyone can get hurt in this cruel and broken world. He let himself forget that tragedy strikes when you least expect it, and he knows his thoughts are getting maudlin, but Harry is still unconscious, and Louis is swearing quietly while trying to heal him, and Niall and Liam have sad, sad eyes. “You’re right,” he says, instead of trying to insist that it’s his fault, because it’s no use arguing. 

When he stands up, Niall drags him into a crushing hug. Zayn isn’t expecting it, but he melts right into it for a blessed second, ignores the shoulder digging into his collarbone in favor of biting his lip, hard. “Not your fault,” Niall mumbles into his skin. “I know how you get, and I need you to know that it’s _not_.”

Liam is kneeling next to Louis, now, talking to him in hushed tones and bracing a steady hand on his shoulder. 

Zayn shuts his eyes tightly and squeezes Niall once more before pulling back. He doesn’t nod, doesn’t answer at all, just steps away and tries to even out his breathing. He can hear Niall sigh, but this is the best he can offer right now.

Harry coughs once, twice, and his eyes flutter. “Hey, love,” says Louis, hovering like he wants to touch but knows he shouldn’t, “do you want to tell us what happened?” 

Harry turns his head to the side and spits blood out onto the carpet. They all fight a wince. When he speaks, his voice is raspy, almost completely shot. “It was a trap,” he says, “she knew we’d come. They took Nick and now they have Ashton, too.” He looks distressed, eyes blinking too rapidly, mouth tight, words on the brink of slurring together, “I shouldn’t have pushed it; I shouldn’t have made him go with me.” He tries to get up and lean on an elbow, wincing, but Niall reaches out and pushes his shoulder gently until he’s back to being flat against the floor.

“You’re hurt,” says Niall firmly (or as firmly as he can with his shaking voice and wide eyes and the way his teeth are worrying his bottom lip), but Harry isn’t calming down.

Louis is doing his best to staunch the bleeding, and Liam has returned to the room with a washcloth and a bowl of clean, cool water. Harry is still babbling. “It was a trap, it was- how did we not know? How could I be so stupid? And I didn’t have my phone so I couldn’t tell you anything or where I was, and I couldn’t tell you that Nick’s flat looked like a crime scene or like someone was murdered there. And Ashton came because he saw it, but she wanted that; she wanted us to see it and go straight to her, and now he’s there by himself and I left him there and, and, and-“

Louis reaches out behind him and grabs the cloth, uses it to wipe away the blood on Harry’s forehead. They all can breathe a little better when his face is clean. “Easy,” murmurs Louis, “relax for a mo’ while I clean you up, then you can tell everything, all right?”

Harry swallows hard but nods as much as he can with Louis’ hand still pressed up against his forehead. Zayn can hear his thoughts still rushing around and fluttering, but they’re all muddled up, and he knows he’ll have to wait until Harry has calmed down enough to be able to go through his nightmare of a day before he’ll be able to make sense of any of it at all.

…

It’s three hours before Harry is able to sit up and quietly explain what happened. He starts with the feeling that had plagued him all morning after Nick had missed dinner the night before – the feeling that something was terribly wrong, and apparently he was right to think so. He talks about the state the flat was in, and meeting Ashton there, and how they were forced up to the third floor once they got to the office.

“It was so weird,” he says, “the elevator doors opened and there were these men everywhere, all surrounding this woman. She smiled at us and called us by name, told us to come in and have a seat. We didn’t really have a choice but to sit down at that point.” He runs a hand through his messy hair before continuing, only wincing a little bit when he touches a tender spot. “She told us she’d been waiting for us, and that she had Nick locked away in an office but that he was okay. She had blonde hair and these gray eyes; they looked like ice, and the second she looked at me, everything felt fuzzy and cloudy…” he shudders, and Louis’ head snaps to attention.

“She was young, right? Thin nose, sharp voice, scarily pale?”

Harry startles. “Yeah, exactly.”

“I’ve met her,” says Louis, looking shell-shocked. “At the pub last month, she talked to me. I didn’t think anything of it. I mean, she seemed normal, but I remember I felt so off, like I was underwater or something.” Harry nods mutely, and the gears are turning in Louis’ head, Zayn can almost hear them. “She’s been watching us.”

“You hid it from me,” says Zayn, inflectionless, trying and failing to mask the hurt.

Louis at least has the decency to look guilty about it. “I didn’t want anyone to worry. I thought…it was weird, I thought I was making up how off it felt, or I was over exaggerating or being dramatic about it. I never thought-“ He cuts himself off and looks down. Zayn doesn’t answer, doesn’t know what to say.

“She’s been watching us,” intones Liam.

Harry looks like he’s going to be sick. “She asked us if we wanted to join her – she didn’t get to say join her in what because Ashton interrupted her, said that we were leaving, and we’d never join her in anything if this was the way she operates. She wasn’t happy about that.”

He pauses, looking torn and biting down hard enough on his lip that Zayn is worried he’ll draw blood. “And then what?” asks Zayn, because he can see that Harry needs a push.

“She told us we should reconsider or else she would have her guards make us reconsider. We told her no, obviously, and then it got violent. There were fists everywhere, and Ashton took a hard hit and went down. I remember I was screaming at one point, and then I took a punch to the mouth, and then the head. I couldn’t jump fast enough; they were everywhere.” He takes an uneven breath before continuing, and his hands are clenched tightly by his sides. “I was on the ground. They grabbed my arms and started dragging me out of the room. I could barely hold myself up. I saw that Ashton was unconscious, and I- I left him there. I jumped.” The discoloration on his upper arms makes sense now that Zayn knows to look at it as a ring of bruises.

There’s a heavy silence, and Zayn can hear what Harry doesn’t say. _I left him there. He’s hurt. I left Nick, too; they’re both there, and I left them._ “You did the right thing,” says Liam, earnest.

“He was bleeding out, and I jumped like a coward.” Harry’s tone is harsher than Zayn has ever heard it. “Somehow it doesn’t feel like the right thing.”

“Was there anything else?” asks Zayn, because he can hear that Harry’s holding back, can feel how hard he’s trying not think about something. “You can tell us,” he adds, because they need to know everything, because it would be just like Harry to hold out on them and then jump back to that office, try to save the day by himself, and get himself killed because apparently he didn’t do a good enough job of it the first time.

Harry shuts his eyes in frustration. “Yeah,” he says, and he sounds defeated, “there was something else.” He’s talking to the group but his eyes are on Zayn, refusing to waver. “She wants to meet with you,” he continues, and Zayn freezes. 

“Me?” Zayn is not important. He is not a leader, or a diplomat, or a politician. He doesn’t know how to handle people like this. 

“Yeah. Tomorrow, at a café downtown. She said she just wants to talk, and that you need to come alone. And if you don’t…” he trails off and steels himself before continuing, “she said that you know she has Ashton and Nick, and if you want to keep them safe then you need to meet with her by yourself.”

Zayn sits still, trying to take it all in, hoping he looks less thrown for a loop than he feels. “I-“

“You shouldn’t go,” Harry cuts in, eyes wide like he hadn’t meant to interrupt like that, but he presses on anyway, “We need to make a plan to get Nick and Ashton out, but it’s no good if you get captured, too. You can’t just give yourself up.”

“Okay, but it’ll be in a public place-“

“Don’t be a martyr,” says Niall, “Harry’s right, you can’t just go in blind.”

“I won’t be blind – I can literally read minds, that’s, like, the opposite of blind. And anyway-“

“You can’t tell us you’re seriously considering this,” protests Louis, indignant. “We don’t negotiate with terrorists! You’d be presenting yourself on a silver platter, and then what?”

“We don’t even know what she wants! And anyway, we can’t just leave them there! If I can help-“

“Absolutely not, Zayn.” Liam’s tone brokers no room for negotiation, and the room goes still. “You’re not going in alone. What will you be able to do? Ask her politely to not kill our friends? You know she’ll give you an ultimatum, and unless you’re planning on going dark side, there is nothing you can do to save them. You’re not going. End of discussion.”

Zayn would argue more, but he doesn’t have to listen to Liam’s thoughts to know that he’d be perfectly willing to lock Zayn up and throw out the key if it meant keeping him safe. Any of them would. He doesn’t need anything more than the looks on their faces to know that he isn’t going to walk out of here tomorrow with their blessing. And it pains him to think about it, but he’s going to have to go without it. He isn’t leaving Nick and Ashton there, not if he can do something to help them. “Fine,” he says, after a long pause, trying to look defeated and finding that it isn’t very difficult, “but we need a plan. We can’t just do nothing.”

He’d feel guilty if the other boys didn’t look so relieved at his acquiescence. 

“Zayn’s right,” says Niall, “we need to think.”

They sit around the rickety dining room table and put their heads together, and Zayn tries not to listen to the others. He mostly fails. They think so loudly, is the thing.

…

Five hours later, they still have no plan, and all of them are having trouble keeping their eyes open. All of the product has mostly deflated out of Zayn’s hair, leaving it loose and floppy against his forehead. 

Discouragement is sitting thick in the air. It permeates the dark curtains, the old wooden chairs, the laminate countertop, and every one of their heads. 

“We can’t stay up all night,” says Louis, finally, “it just won’t work. We aren’t even coming up with usable solutions anymore. Let’s try again in the morning.”

Niall and Harry are nodding, and Zayn wants to pull his hair out because he’s frustrated but even he can admit Louis has a point. It’s Liam, unsurprisingly, that has the problem with Louis’ idea. “We can’t just stop,” he says, agitated, “that’s not an option.”

They’re tired – drained, really – and maybe that’s why the emotion flares so easily into the equivalent of bared teeth. “So we should push ourselves to exhaustion for nothing? Or, even better, come up with a plan at four in the morning and then collapse while trying to execute it?”

Liam is puffing up to argue again but Zayn steps in, knows he holds the deciding vote in the palm of his hand but still hasn’t figured out why, exactly. “Leave it, Liam,” he says, feeling the hours he’s been awake pressing down on him like a physical weight. “Please. Just leave it. We’ll figure out what we’re going to do after everyone’s gotten some sleep.”

“Fine,” says Liam, but it doesn’t sound like an agreement. Zayn can hear in his thoughts that he feels like he’s been backed into a corner, and that he isn’t going to sleep until they find some way to save everyone. Proper hero complex, Liam has (and maybe they all do to some extent). 

They file out, and when Zayn sneaks a peek at Liam’s room an hour later, he sees light seeping out under the door.

…

At six in the morning, Zayn wakes up to complete and total silence for the first time in weeks – he’s rarely awake when all the others are still sleeping, and Niall is generally noisy enough when he’s up that Zayn hears him, too (never stops singing, that boy, and Zayn swears in another life, he’s a rock star or something) – and it’s eerie, how hushed it all is.

Snippets of dreams brush his consciousness, but they’re mostly just snatches of color peppered with the occasional nonsensical word. He tunes them out, mostly, has done for a long time. 

He tiptoes out of his room and sees Liam slumped over at the dining room table. He must have come back out after the other boys fell asleep, trying to fix this mess they’re in. Zayn resists the urge to push his hair back and kiss his sleep-warm forehead. It’s not easy.

The note he scribbles out and leaves by Liam’s hand isn’t the most eloquent thing he’s ever written, but he hopes it’ll buy him some time before the boys inevitably get involved and try to stop him. 

It reads as follows:

_If you’re reading this, then you probably know what’s happened, but I’ll tell you anyway just in case you think I’ve been abducted or something._

_I’m going to meet with her today. It’s our only choice right now, and we don’t even know for sure that I won’t be back to share an afternoon tea with you lads, completely unharmed. Maybe she really does just want to talk._

_If I do get taken, because I know it’s a possibility, and I’m not an idiot, then I expect you boys to at least try to get me out somehow. There’s no one else I trust to do it, anyway._

_Please don’t try to stop me. I’ve already left, and we can’t risk losing anyone else._

_Don’t do anything stupid while I’m gone._

_Zayn_

They’re going to absolutely kill him when they wake up, but Zayn knows that if he waits for a group decision, he’ll end up locked away in a room with someone watching him 24/7 to make sure he doesn’t sneak out, and he can’t let that happen.

He tosses one last glance at Liam’s sleeping form before slipping out the door and reminds himself that doing this is in all of their best interests.

…

The café that the evil mastermind lady picked out to meet at is quaint and sweet and mostly empty. He’d killed time in the morning walking around the city aimlessly, avoiding the café until it was time to be there because he knows the boys would probably scope it out beforehand, hoping to intercept him. Or maybe he’s just being paranoid, which is also a distinct possibility; either way, he’s not willing to take the risk.

When he does walk in, at around ten minutes after one, she’s waiting for him at a table by the window, situated away from other customers and workers. “Zayn!” she beams, like they’re old friends, and he pushes down a sneer. “I’m Eve; it’s lovely to finally meet you.”

He has to play nice. She has the upper hand, here. “Hi,” he says, taking a seat across from her and swallowing against the pit of anger clogging his throat. “Harry said you wanted to talk to me.” His voice almost cracks on Harry’s name, remembering how much blood there was, and the fear, and the way things crashed so cleanly into shrapnel.

“I did, yes,” and her tone is laced with steel. As soon as the storminess appears, though, it passes, and a more placid expression graces her face. She’d be pretty if she weren’t trying to kill all of Zayn’s friends, or whatever her plan is. “I’d say I’m surprised you came, but your little friend – what was his name again? Austin, or Anthony, or something – is so helpful when it comes to that kind of thing. Told me everything, and it only took a little while to break down his resistance. I guess he saw in advance how useless it would be to try to fight me.” She giggles casually as if they’re discussing a sporting event or the latest piece of gossip. His blood is boiling.

Zayn clenches and unclenches his jaw and manages to bring his mood back toward relative stability. Flying off the handle won’t help anything, and he knows he needs to keep an eye on his temper because it’s gotten him into trouble before. “What did you want to talk to me about?” he asks, trying to focus the conversation back onto why he came so he can hopefully get out of here.

She’s quiet for a moment, presumably thinking, but Zayn has a hard time hearing her. He’s reaching out as much as he can, but only catches glimpses. It’s like her mind is surrounded by a thick fog. “My dad’s trick,” she says, catching him off guard and pointing to her temple. “He used to call it a ‘muffler.’ Cute, right? It was the first power I ever picked up. Not the last, though,” she muses, and she’s eyeing Zayn hungrily, “not the last.”

“You’re a mimic,” he realizes, trying not to sound dumbfounded. He’s never heard of anyone being able to take other people’s powers, but it must be possible if she’s sitting right here in front of him.

“Oh, you are the smart one.” She’s smiling at him proudly, like she’s impressed. “I can’t just take them, though. They have to be offered up to me, which is why I needed to bring your friends in. It always takes a little bit of persuasion.” He tries and fails to shut down the thought of her methods of persuasion being used on his boys, and has to physically repress a shudder. She’s laughing that vicious, tinkling laugh again. “Now, I want to make you an offer.”

Zayn sits very still. “What kind of offer?”

“Well,” she amends, wrinkling her nose up, “it’s less of an offer and more of a choice.” When she sees his ill-concealed glare (which is pretty much the expression he’s had since this whole thing started), she drops a bit of the upbeat charade. “Oh, come on, Zayn,” he bristles when she uses his name, feels it sit dirtied in her mouth, “I’m not some super villain. I’m offering you a choice, and you can make your decision however you want to, alright?”

“What’s the choice?” he asks, impatient and uncomfortable. He feels hot and prickly under her steady gaze, and a bundle of nerves is growing in his stomach. He has a feeling that whatever she offers him, it isn’t going to be something he wants.

Eve steeples her fingers in front of her, leaning forward, and a sheet of blonde hair falls over a sharp cheekbone so artfully it almost looks rehearsed. “You can join me, or I can make you and your friends comply. It’s simple, really.”

It’s not that Zayn was expecting anything else to come out of her mouth, but he still has to work to contain his emotions. “I don’t understand,” he finally manages to choke out, but his voice is steadier than he’d expected it to be. “Join you in what way? What are you trying to do that you need so much power?”

Her eyebrow ticks. Zayn catches a snatch of thought: _I’m going to have so much fun with this one_ , and then stops trying to listen to her altogether, swallowing all of the emotions that threaten to suffocate him. “We aren’t hiding, but we might as well be, don’t you think?” It doesn’t sound rhetorical, but Zayn keeps quiet. “Powerful as we are, and we’re still rather invisible. Some of us could kill just by blinking, or manipulate our friends and family into playing right into our hands, but we’re not appreciated for it. People just go on with their lives, simple as that.”

“We’re not the first,” says Zayn quietly.

“We’re not,” she agrees, “but we might as well be, for all the space we’ve been given in society. Just think of what we could do if we decided to stand up for once.” He voice has gone dreamlike, and her thoughts are cotton candy pink laced with something far more sinister. “You have a gift, Zayn, but you haven’t been thinking big enough. Do me a favor and imagine it: the two of us, together…we could bring the city to its knees.”

Zayn feels his insides turn to ice. “People like you,” he says slowly, standing up, and he doesn’t even care that he’s making a bit of a scene, “are the reason my entire family is dead.” He pauses, takes a deep breath. “You’re absolutely mad if you think I’m going to join you. Take me, if you have to, but don’t expect me to stand next to you when it’s all said and done. I will _never_ join you.”

“Let’s not be hasty,” she answers, sounding entirely unbothered. “Sit down, please, we’re not finished here.”

He would do anything to bolt out of there and not turn back, escape back to the base and try to put this nightmare out of his head, but she’s looking at him knowingly, and no matter how angry he is he can’t forget that she has hostages. This isn’t just about him. When he blinks, he keeps his eyes shut for an extra beat, willing himself to get it together. He saw the guards by the door when he walked in, knows that escape is futile, as small as he is. None of them are really fighters, even if Liam could probably hold his own against an opponent; they don’t have to do things like that often enough for them to have developed any high level combat skills. There isn’t a choice. He sits, fuming. “What else is there to discuss? I said no.”

Her smirk is wicked. “You’re not the only one I’d want by my side,” she remarks casually, “even if you would be my first pick. You have some friends that would be rather useful, I think.”

“Why me?” he asks, because as far as he can tell, his power isn’t really much of a weapon, and she doesn’t seem to need any help reading people.

“You’re the leader,” she answers simply. “Ever heard the saying: ‘cut off the head of the snake and the body will follow?’ It’s like that. I did my research. I know that they look to you.”

He wants to take a moment to fathom how utterly creepy it is that she ‘did her research,’ but his mind is skipping like a broken record. “I’m not the leader,” he argues, not sure why it matters so much that he prove this point. “We don’t- that’s not how it works. If you take me, they’ll still come, and they’ll probably try to kill you. Just because I’m not there doesn’t mean they’re not perfectly capable.” His heart is beating faster as he speaks. Maybe the other boys look to him for certain things, but he’s not…he’s not a leader. He’s not loud enough, or decisive enough, or strong enough for that. He’s just trying to survive, the same as anyone else.

“Oh, I’m not keeping you here. When we’re done here, you’re free to go. I really did just want to talk.” She sounds almost offended, like being accused of having an ulterior motive is absolutely ridiculous. The hypocrisy is so blatant it’s almost amusing.

Zayn blinks once, twice, three times. “You’re letting me go?” He tries not to sound too incredulous in case she changes her mind, but ever since last night, he’s been bracing himself for what it might mean to be taken captive.

“Think of it as a gesture of good will. You have some time to think about it, how’s that? You can tell your friends that my offer’s on the table for them, too – I don’t discriminate, and if they want a piece of the action, they’re welcome to it.” She leers, and he tastes disgust under his tongue. “And if by tomorrow you’re not at my office with a surrender and an apology, I’ll take whoever I want, start picking them off one by one.”

He fights the urge to scrub a nervous hand through his hair. 

Eve just grins at him, completely at ease. He thinks he’s probably never hated anyone more in his entire life, and that’s confirmed when she starts speaking again. “Your little band of rogue heroes does have some nice prizes…the teleporter is rather slippery, but that shield of yours would be so useful. Better even than the muffling, I think. Or the one with the blasts, maybe.” Zayn clenches his jaw and feels like cursing when she catches him. “Sore spot?” she taunts. “He is rather handsome, isn’t he? I can just imagine how pretty he’d be after I let my guards at him, all strung up and begging for mercy-”

Zayn slams his hand on the table. “Enough,” he says, and it’s supposed to come out calm and commanding, but instead he just sounds hoarse, like a deflated balloon. “That’s enough. I understand.”

She smiles at him again (she’s always smiling in that slick, condescending way, and Zayn wants to claw it off of her face). “I’m not the villain,” she tells him, like she’s explaining it to a child. “I’m only doing what I need to do. We deserve respect. And I’m willing to fight for it by any means necessary.” He glares at her, but doesn’t answer any further. She just looks back neutrally, considering. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Zayn. You have until midnight. If you don’t show up, I’ll take it as a declaration of war and proceed accordingly.”

_A declaration of war_ ; this woman is absolutely mad. Zayn is still angry enough that he isn’t panicking, but he can feel it coming on. “We won’t take your side on this,” he promises.

She shrugs. “We’ll see, won’t we?” When he doesn’t answer, she flutters her fingers toward the door. “Unless you want to continue this lovely chat, you’re free to go. The guards won’t give you any trouble.”

He gets up to walk away, and when he’s halfway to the exit, she calls out to him. “Oh, and Zayn? In case you get any ideas about striking first, or something ridiculous like that, do remember what happened to your friend. We’ll chew you up and spit you back out, easy as that.”

He thinks of Harry, bruised and bloody and terrified, nods silently, and walks out of the café.

…

The walk back to the base is long and arduous, but Zayn needs the space and time to think, and hailing a cab sounds more exhausting than just making the trek himself. And anyway, he has plenty to ruminate over.

His options are, obviously, limited. He could try to pull the martyr card again – join her and try to take her down himself from the inside – but he doesn’t trust himself to pull it off, and he doesn’t know if his boys would ever forgive him, or if he could forgive himself. They need to present a united front or she’ll pick them off one by one, and he can’t let that happen. He can’t let her have any of them. The images she put into his head, the things that could happen if he lets his guard down for even one second…he feels frantic all of a sudden, like he could run a marathon but also like he could sink to his knees and sob his eyes out in the middle of the sidewalk.

He does neither, choosing instead to continue to walk. Zayn is nothing if not practical in times of crisis. He prides himself in keeping a clear head – maybe it’s because he’s constantly surrounded by everyone else’s mess of thoughts, and it makes him feel better to have some control, or something like that.

It ends up taking him nearly two hours to get back, and even then he dawdles outside, nervous to go in and face everything that’s happened. He knows, rationally, that the boys will be upset but grateful that he’s back in one piece, but he genuinely just feels sick.

He doesn’t want to talk to anyone. He mostly wants a shower and a cigarette and maybe some coffee, and for the last two weeks to not have happened.

The enormity of it all truly hits him when he’s steps from the house, the half-wooded area providing enough of a semblance of privacy that he feels like he’s completely alone. The boys are right inside and he can hear them if he strains hard enough. He could walk inside this instant if he wanted to.

He doesn’t want to. Echoes of her words are nipping at him, tearing at his defenses, and this is a no-win situation that he doesn’t know how to think his way out of. He sits down against a tree with his head in his hands, rough bark scraping his back, and tries to keep it together. And then he remembers that he missed work today, hadn’t even thought about it, and it’s like a dam breaks. It’s a silly thing to be upset about, but it’s one thing too many.

“You’re fine,” he tells himself, but he can’t stop shaking. “You’re _fine_ ,” but it comes out choked, and he’s scrubbing at his face. A few rogue tears track hot down his face, and then a few more, and he can’t stop them any more than he can stop feeling completely overwhelmed. He’s going to get fired. His friends are going to be kidnapped, and then tortured, and he can’t do anything to stop it, and- and-

It’s too much.

He isn’t sure how long he sits there before the boys find him, only that they approach him with soft voices and raised hands like he’s a wounded animal, and they’re scared he’ll lash out. Zayn’s too exhausted to even protest, lets Liam carry him inside and scrubs at his face one last time. 

The explanation he stumbles through is halting but matter of fact. Niall burrows his way into Zayn’s side and presses up close, and Zayn feels like a disaster but he’s stopped crying by the end of it, at least.

The thickness of despair weighs heavy in the air.

They go to sleep without a plan for the second night in a row, and the nightmares (both his own and not) keep Zayn awake until the sun is creeping back up over the horizon and spreading thin, watery light across everything in sight.

Liam finds him in the morning and doesn’t say anything. He just puts an arm around Zayn, and Zayn reaches up to cling at his wrist like a lifeline, nails digging in. He feels worn out and shaky, and he’s probably cutting off Liam’s circulation.

“We’ll stop her,” says Liam, calm like lake water, “I know we will.”

Zayn thinks back to a burning house, to his sisters’ screams, to the very last time he saw his parents, and he isn’t so sure.


	4. LIAM

Two hours before they’re meant to go on a potentially suicidal rescue mission, Zayn comes into Liam’s room and sits cross-legged at the foot of the bed. He’s quiet, and the stillness that surrounds him is more prominent than ever. Liam sits up, facing him, and fights the urge to reach out.

He and Zayn are both more and less than Liam wants them to be, but this is wartime. They don’t have time to carve out their own space; not now, at least. It doesn’t matter what they are. It doesn’t matter what Liam wants. What matters is staying alive and whole and getting out in one piece – the rest, hopefully, will follow.

Zayn hasn’t said anything, so Liam breaks the silence. “All right?” he asks, and it’s a stupid question, but with the two of them, it’s always been like this, checking in, call and response.

A beat passes before: “Have I ever told you about what happened to my family?” Zayn ticks his voice up at the end, but it doesn’t sound like a question because he must already know the answer.

“You haven’t,” says Liam, steady. Zayn is looking at his hands folded in front of him.

Zayn smiles, but it’s small and sad. “I’d just turned fifteen. My family always…they all had powers, too, like my mum could alter memories, and my older sister could manipulate the weather in really small spaces; it was pretty sick. One time she singlehandedly stopped me from getting frostbite. Anyway, we had to move because of my dad’s job, and I started going to a new school. My parents told me not to say anything about being able to hear thoughts, but I- I was fifteen,” he says helplessly. “I was stupid, and I thought it was cool, so I told a couple of my mates. They thought it was, wicked, right? Like I was some kind of superhero. But they weren’t the only ones at my new school who were interested, and the one that approached me about it first- he was a year older than me.”

Zayn falls quiet again, and Liam nudges at his knee with his own. “Yeah?” he prompts gently.

“Right,” says Zayn, “sorry,” but he sounds far away. “His name was Ben. Bit stuck up, but I only thought that after I’d known him for a while. He was my first sexuality crisis – I thought he was brilliant and fit and funny, and he paid attention to me. He was the first person I’d met outside of my family that could do anything like me. He could turn water into ice, but he wasn’t that good at it, needed to practice but didn’t have the patience, I guess. His hands were always cold.”

Liam frowns, waiting for the inevitable turn of the story, where it all goes dark. “Sounds like a jerk,” he says, heated, and it’s dumb and petty, and he immediately wishes he could take it back. It doesn’t matter, though. Zayn can hear it either way, and he barely looks up.

“I opened up to him. About me, about my family, about everything. He was a good listener.” Zayn twists his hands together. “I liked the attention, I guess. I don’t know. I liked him, and I was young and stupid, and I gave him all of my secrets without even hesitating. I always over think everything, and the one time-” he cuts himself off, looking upset. “He asked me to do some things for him, and in the beginning it was easy. He said we could be like superheroes, you know? But I had to earn his trust first, or something, I don’t- I helped him cheat on a test, once, and then I told him people’s secret crushes, and it was- it was stupid, right? And silly. Kid stuff.”

He pauses again, and Liam feels an ugly twist in his stomach because he knows it gets worse from here. He’s itching to grab Zayn’s hand, or insist that he doesn’t have to go on if it makes him uncomfortable to talk about it, but all of those offers are always on the table. Liam is soft for him. They all know that, even Zayn. Maybe especially Zayn, actually. “And then?” he asks, and he knows he doesn’t have to say it out loud but it’s always made him feel more grounded, and he expects it’s the same for Zayn.

Zayn bites at his lower lip absently like he doesn’t realize he’s doing it. Liam realizes that Zayn probably can’t even hear Liam’s thoughts right now, isn’t focused enough, is too caught up in his own head. This happens, sometimes, but Liam rarely sees it up close. “It escalated. I started to get uncomfortable, but Ben knew I liked him, and he would keep pushing until I gave in. I wasn’t hard to convince. We did- we did some bad things.” Liam doesn’t ask, and Zayn doesn’t tell, just gliding over it, the only sign he’s uncomfortable being the low hoarseness of his voice. “And then he told me we were going to start blackmailing people, that I was going to steal their secrets, and we could get them to do whatever we wanted, and I wouldn’t do it.”

Zayn coughs, and his eyes widen like he hadn’t expected it, like it jarred him slightly out of the memory he’d been reliving. “You good?” asks Liam, trying to stop from fidgeting.

“Yeah, yeah, fine. Sorry. Anyway, he tried making promises, at first, and then, like, bribery, buying me things and being extra sweet, but we weren’t- we were never dating, or anything; it was never serious. I got over my crush eventually and saw him for who he was.”

“Good,” says Liam, “that’s good,” and feels silly saying it, but he means it. He’s glad that, whatever this boy did to hurt Zayn so badly, he didn’t also break his heart. 

Zayn shoots him a ghost of a smile, more present in the conversation now than he was before. “I wasn’t responding the way he wanted me to, I guess, so he moved to threats.”

“He threatened your family,” Liam guesses.

Zayn nods miserably, looking back down at his hands. “I didn’t take him seriously. I thought I knew him, you know? And as far as I knew, he would never stoop that low – he wanted to do terrible, scary things, but I didn’t think he was a bad person, somehow. In my eyes, he was still someone I was trying to impress, I guess. And he said- it was supposed to be good, once all the bad was done with.”

An errant tree branch taps against the window, and they both startle. Liam laughs nervously when they realize what made the sound, and Zayn just shakes his head like he can’t believe how jumpy he is. He continues once the room settles again. “He kept making threats, though, and they got more serious, but I wasn’t going to try to extort the mayor of the city. I was smarter than that, at least, even if I was pretty stupid.”

Liam says, “good move, there,” and hopes it sounds encouraging and not condescending. He worries that he treads the line, sometimes, even if he never means to talk down to anyone. 

Zayn has a heartbeat mouth and sad, dark eyes. “I told him, once and for all, that I was finished with him. I started fighting back, used his thoughts against him, really believed I could stop him on my own. He didn’t take it well. He got angry easily – I hadn’t really noticed, before, but he had such a short temper, and…the threats he’d been making, he started sending them at all hours of the day. Texts, emails, notes, some other poor kid forced into passing along the message…. But I never thought he was serious about it.” Zayn pauses, and Liam doesn’t prompt him, just lets the silence expand until Zayn wants to break it. He doesn’t have to wait all that long. “A month later, the whole school basically saw me as a leper. He’d spread awful rumors about me and my family, but he wasn’t done there. Two months later, I was sitting in my room doing homework at, like, two in the morning, and I smelled smoke. I started yelling for everyone to wake up and get out of the house, and I called the emergency line, and-”

He breaks off and shudders. Zayn’s eyes are dry, but there’s an anguished twist to his lips, like remembering this is physically painful. He continues softly: “I was running toward the front door when the first beam fell. Our house, it was old, and I didn’t know- it cut me off from them. I couldn’t see anyone, and there was smoke everywhere. It started collapsing. I couldn’t get back up the stairs so I ran outside and hollered at the top of my lungs for someone to help, but the street was dead empty.” He screws his eyes shut like he’s trying to block out the memory. “I was the only one to make it out.”

“Oh, Zayn,” breathes Liam, feeling the pain like a lead weight in his belly. He’d known the story would end like this, everything up in flames and poor, young Zayn left to fend for himself, but hearing it out loud is brutal. He wants to say he’s sorry, but it won’t fix anything. It won’t make Zayn feel better. It won’t bring his family back.

Zayn just shrugs, trying to play it off, suddenly shy. “I’ve never told anyone that before,” he says quietly, still looking down. He looks smaller like this, curled into himself at the foot of Liam’s bed, all traces of his usual swagger drowned out by vulnerability. It’s a rare sight. Liam is oddly, overwhelmingly touched, and decides not to even try to hide it from Zayn (it’s not like he couldn’t wheedle it out of Liam eventually, with those persuasive eyes). 

“Hey,” says Liam, because Zayn is starting to fidget like he maybe regrets what he said, “thank you for sharing that with me. I know it must’ve been hard, and it is a lot to take in, but you don’t have to worry about anything. It’s just me, yeah?” His voice is soft and warm, trying to coax Zayn even further out of that elusive shell of his.

It works, at least a little bit. “Yeah. Just you.” He’s quiet for a moment, and then he looks up. “You know I trust you more than anyone, right?” He says it like he needs Liam to know, like he couldn’t bear it if Liam thought otherwise.

Liam feels hot all over under Zayn’s earnest gaze. It’s disconcerting, being the focus of all of that attention. It throws him off every single time. “I know,” he manages to say, because he does, “and I trust you more than anyone, too, so we’re even, I think.”

Zayn smiles weakly, and a piece of unstyled hair flops onto his forehead. “We’re compatible,” he jokes, and some of the tightness in Liam’s chest loosens.

“Thank goodness,” answers Liam, smiling right back. The physical distance between them is still driving him a little mad, but it’s times like these that he’s learned Zayn needs his space.

There’s a cursory knock on the door, and they both straighten, turning to see who it is. “Hey,” and it’s Louis poking his head in, “we’re leaving in half an hour; you lads all right?”

“We’re good,” says Liam, because he likes to reassure people, and he thinks that he and Zayn need to hear it as much as Louis does, “you?”

“Peachy,” deadpans Louis, but he looks more or less okay despite the circles under his eyes, and Zayn would know if he was lying, anyway.

Liam cracks his knuckles. “Let’s start getting ready, then,” he says, and the three of them walk together to the dining room table to run over the plan just one last time.

…

The thing about their plan is that it’s reckless to the point of near stupidity. They’re basically pulling out all the stops and hoping to come out alive, and it’s usually the kind of dangerous Liam would never touch with a ten foot pole (at least, he wouldn’t let anyone even remotely important to him touch it with a ten foot pole), but they’ve been left without options here, and the last time they failed to outline a plan, they woke up, and Zayn was gone.

Zayn was- Liam didn’t know if he was _alive_ , if he’d been taken or hurt or killed or _what_ , and if they hadn’t found Zayn shaking so badly he could hardly stand, then Liam would’ve chewed him out for hours after, would’ve yelled until his voice gave out.

This time, at least, they have a plan, and it might be boneheaded and risky beyond belief, but they’re going to execute it together. Or, well, four of them are going to execute it together.

If Liam really had a say, it would be just him and Louis going in, maybe Harry, too, since he can get away. But Harry can’t take a hit like Louis can, or deliver one like Liam can, and he’s already been traumatized enough. Zayn can’t defend himself at all, really, and Liam already knows that it’s going to be a distraction for him while they’re in there fighting for their lives.

And Niall, well. Niall isn’t coming.

“What the hell is this?” yells Niall, tugging on his wrist. The metal of the handcuff clanks against the radiator and holds fast. “Ha ha, very funny; now let me out.”

Liam steps up because that’s his job, isn’t it, to shoulder this kind of crushing responsibility. “It’s too dangerous,” he says, and tries not to flinch at the viscerally betrayed look in Niall’s eyes, and fails, “we can’t risk you getting hurt, or captured. Right now our only advantage is that Zayn can hear her thoughts, and even then, he can only hear half of them. If she takes you, we’re done for. We can’t risk it. I’m sorry.”

Niall’s eyes are wide and getting hysterical. “You’re not leaving me here.”

“We have to,” says Harry, gentle like he’s trying to soften the blow.

Niall rattles at the cuff again, frustrated. “No, you bloody well _don’t_ have to,” he retaliates, low and furious and nearly a growl, “now let me out.” They’ve never seen Niall (upbeat, joyful, sunshiny Niall) this angry before.

Liam looks at Louis, who in turn looks at his watch. “We need to leave now if we’re going to do this,” says Louis, apologetically, and he refuses to make eye contact with Niall, “this is it, lads.”

They start to file out, and Niall is still yelling, cursing up a storm behind them. Liam closes the door on _don’t you fucking do this to me_ \- and Zayn, who hadn’t said a word the whole time, is pale, mouth drawn up tight. “Hey,” says Liam, and it’s just for Zayn, “we’re keeping him safe. It’s a good thing.” He doesn’t remind Zayn that this was his idea in the first place, doesn’t think he needs to.

Zayn manages a shaky nod, but his eyes are steel, and on the way to the office he leans heavily into Liam’s side. Harry keeps throwing them concerned glances, but it isn’t as if he looks great himself. The mood in the car is tense, like it could snap at any second, like they’re all only just realizing how slim their chances are of accomplishing anything at all.

When they pull up to the building, Liam gently pries his hand from Zayn’s, and they get out of the car.

…

The operation is, unsurprisingly, a disaster.

Eve herself isn’t even there to see the confrontation – it’s just Liam, Zayn, Louis, and Harry against a whole squad of trained guards, or cronies, or whatever they are, on one of the higher levels of the building. Liam takes out as many as he can, but he can’t be everywhere at once, and he swears at one point he hears Louis’ nose break.

He loses track of Harry, which, okay, normal, but then he loses sight of Zayn, and Liam can feel his movements growing more manic. He shoots a man into a wall and watches him crumple, unconscious, and doesn’t even have the time to feel conflicted about it before taking an elbow to the stomach, hard. 

Louis pops up by his side, and yep, his nose is definitely broken. “Harry!” he yells over the din, voice cracking in the middle, “Get Zayn! We need to get out of here! There’s too many of them!”

Liam goes to protest, because he alone has managed to put at least four or five of them out of commission just in the last few minutes, but there are people coming through the doors even as he thinks it, and he doesn’t doubt there are more where they came from. “How could we have thought this was a good idea?” asks Liam, and Louis shoots him a look.

“It was your plan, Liam, don’t look at me.” He says it while ducking under a punch, and Liam turns to shoot the offender a good twelve or so meters away. “I was all for the ‘move to the Italian countryside, far, far away from the evil deranged psychopath trying to kill all of us’ plan, but no one listened to me, did they?”

Liam clenches his jaw and says nothing, because, despite the infuriating way Louis words it, and the fact that he would never be on board to run and hide, it’s partially true, and they don’t have time to be arguing about it, anyway.

“Harry!” yells Louis again, and Liam can’t see him or Zayn behind the wall of bodies that’s accumulated in front of him and Louis – they’re backed up against a wall, and Liam can only do so much when the masses keep pressing in on them. “Harry, come on!”

It’s several more breathless minutes of fighting before Harry appears, practically plastered to Louis’ side. He tries to throw a punch, but it doesn’t connect, so he jumps a meter to the left, and then one to the right, dodging as best he can. “Zayn’s outside; he’s waiting for us – got proper cross with me when I said I was coming back in, and he had to stay. But he’s out there; he’s fine. We need to go.”

Liam releases a breath he didn’t realize he’d been holding. “Good,” he says, steady, “then let’s get out of here,” and focuses all of his energy into clearing a path to the door.

At one point, he manages to knock five people at once off of their feet, and Louis cheers, “Yes, Payno!” like this is a sporting match, or something. Liam ignores him, continuing to push forward. It’s another seven grueling minutes before they finish covering the ten meters, and they almost lose Harry at one point, but he’s pretty hard to hold for any length of time, and he always finds his way back to them.

Zayn is pacing in front of the building when they get outside, holding a cell phone up to his ear and eyebrows pulled together tight and harsh as he listens. “Okay, Perrie, calm down; we’re gonna figure it out. All right. Be careful, yeah? Let me know if you hear anything else. I know, I know. Bye.” He looks up, face dark. “Leigh-Anne’s in there, too, now. Or, she’s wherever they’ve taken her. Apparently Eve decided to name-drop me. Perrie’s having a proper freak out.”

Liam feels red. Louis barks a laugh because apparently that’s how he’s decided to process this information, and says, “this week just keeps getting better and better, doesn’t it?” He’s the only one laughing. They pile back into the car and Louis is still chuckling, and Liam’s almost scared he’ll choke on the blood dripping down from his nose. The bone’s already starting to set incorrectly. Chances are, Louis will come to Liam in about an hour asking him to re-break it. And Liam will do it, not because he wants to or because he ever likes to break anything, but because Louis needs him to, and why else does Liam ever do anything? People need him. He does what he can.

“So who wants to un-cuff Niall?” asks Harry when they’re about two thirds of the way back, “Because I’m not sure I want to get within swinging distance, honestly.”

Zayn heaves a sigh. “It was my idea to put him in that position the first place, anyway. I’ll do it.” He doesn’t look wary, or nervous, or even upset, really. He just looks exhausted. Liam wants to wrap him in a blanket or something, take him someplace safe, but Zayn never was one to be coddled.

“Well,” says Liam, “here we are,” and the words feel a bit clunky in his mouth, but he says them anyway. He isn’t sure if it’s because he’s trying to preserve some shred of normalcy (because he isn’t sure what part of their lives has ever constituted normalcy, really, even from the very beginning), or if it’s because the silence is pressing at them from every angle and threatening to stifle them.

Liam’s the first to walk inside, and he stops short as soon as he’s in sight of the radiator. Louis slams into his back with a little _oof_ and cranes his neck around Liam to see what’s happened.

The handcuffs are gone, as is Niall. There’s a folded card resting in his place, sitting on top of an empty, cream-colored envelope, and Liam can feel his pulse in his throat.

“Liam,” says Louis, very slowly, “please tell me that’s from Niall, and he’s gone to pick up food, or something.”

It feels like they’re holding their breath. Liam steps forward and picks up the card gingerly, knows immediately it’s not from Niall by the thick cardstock and the gold foil and the looping, swirly script. Liam unfolds it carefully, and this time, no one is looking over his shoulder. They’re all just looking at him, waiting where they’re huddled in the doorway like they’re scared to walk into the room lest this nightmare actually be real.

It takes him several tries to get words out.

“It’s addressed to One Direction,” he says, and shoves down the hysterical laugh threatening to bubble up in his throat. “I’d forgotten we called ourselves that. Feels like ages ago.” He clears his throat, starts over, and begins to read. “Thank you for the present you left me,” and oh, Liam feels sick, “the fact that he was restrained already made it almost painfully easy to pack him up and take him with me. I hope you’re not too surprised by this turn of events, but I did need a shield, and I shortened the deadline a bit, if you hadn’t noticed. I just had a feeling it wouldn’t have mattered either way. You all are stubborn, as it were. My offer is still on the table if any of you are interested in joining me.”

Liam’s hands are shaking a bit. “Is that all?” asks Zayn.

“There’s a, um, there’s a postscript. It just says thank you, again.” Liam knows they’re all thinking the same thing, that they left Niall handcuffed and defenseless just to be grabbed right out from under them, that they tried to protect him and instead accidentally threw him to the wolves. But anger is red-hot, and Liam thinks he’s burning up from the inside, out. “We should just get our hands on a gun, see how easy they can stop us, then.”

“Liam-” says Harry, low and just shy of warning, but Liam isn’t having it.

“I’m serious! It doesn’t even matter what kinds of powers she has; I’d like to see anyone survive getting their head blown off.” His chest is more or less heaving, and he can feel himself growing slightly hysterical.

“Liam.” This time it’s Zayn, sharpness in his voice cushioned by the warm, steadying hand he places on Liam’s back, and Liam feels himself deflate. “They could get guns, too, I’m sure. I think the only reason we’re even alive right now is because they need us to not be dead in order for her plan to work.”

“Plus, you’ll get thrown in prison forever,” supplies Louis. “It’s not like the police don’t hate us enough already.”

Liam presses the heels of his palms into his eyes and pushes until he sees starbursts. “I know,” he mumbles, feeling all at once very small. “I just-” He doesn’t have the right words to convey his frustration. He’s no good at feeling helpless, never has been. And then there’s a hand on his shoulder, and another at the base of his neck, and he isn’t the only one feeling wretched and beaten down, but here are his boys trying to hold him together, and he’s so grateful and miserable and mixed-up inside that he thinks he could cry.

They stay like that for a dizzying thread of seconds before pulling apart, all of their eyes replete with red rims and heavy bags underneath. And Zayn walks outside with a lighter and a pack of cigarettes, and Louis goes to join him, and Harry stumbles into his own room with a dazed look on his face like he hasn’t quite absorbed everything, and Liam-

Liam sits on the couch in the living room and fiddles with his rings, trying, for the time being, to think of a plan that won’t get the people he cares about hurt.


	5. NIALL

“Easy!” he snaps, rubbing his upper arm, right as he’s shoved into a random office. In response, the door is slammed in his face. “Morons,” he mumbles, mutinous, and that’s the moment he realizes he has company.

The room is bigger than he’d thought it would be, and there are also more people here than he’d expected. “Oh, hi,” he says, a little dumbfounded.

Ashton waves from where he’d been spinning around on the desk chair, looking worn down but thankfully alive and mostly unharmed. Leigh-Anne is sitting on top of the desk, legs swinging, and Niall feels a pang – they’re friends, he and Leigh, good ones at that, and he can’t help but feel just the tiniest bit responsible for the fact that she’d ended up here. “Stop that,” she chides, looking ready to wag a finger in his face. “I might not be able to feel you, but you’ve got guilt written all over your face.” She hops down gracefully and wraps Niall into a tight hug, which he immediately returns gratefully.

“It’s good to see you all in one piece,” says Niall, honestly, and Nick waves from his spot on the floor.

“Cheers, and same to you. How are the others doing?”

All three of them look at him expectantly, and he is so glad that as far as he knows it’s all good news. “They’re okay,” he says. “Smarter than us, not getting kidnapped and all.”

“Better us than them,” says Leigh-Anne, expression wilting into sadness and a fierceness that sits deep in her eyes. Ashton murmurs his agreement, and Niall hopes that the fact that this looks like everyone that’s here means that the other boys managed to escape back to the base with no problems. He wonders what they’ll think when they find him gone, and then he wonders if he could’ve avoided this had they just let him go with them, idiots that they are.

Nick stretches out, nudging Niall’s ankle with his shoe. “So how’d you end up here? Leigh-Anne and I were taken from home, and Ashton thought charging in here with Mr. Teleporter as his only backup would be a great idea – yes, I know you were trying to save me, or something, very noble – but you don’t look too beat up. Did they catch you napping or something?”

It’s funnier in hindsight, so Niall’s very nearly laughing when he says, “the boys cuffed me to a radiator and left me there. Wasn’t hard for Eve and her meathead assistant guard people to drag me out.”

“Wait, they handcuffed you and then they _left_?”

“Yeah,” says Niall, “it was the only way they could stop me from joining whatever stupid plan they had to break in here. They said it was too dangerous. Ironic, right?”

Ashton looks like he’s trying very, very hard not to laugh, but he’s doing a terrible job of schooling his features into something serious. It cracks Niall’s composure, and then all of them are laughing, practically rolling on the floor at the absurdity of the situation. And it’s not that it’s funny. It really isn’t, and Niall is maybe a little afraid of what’s going to happen, and all of their efforts thus far to fix this mess have been in vain, but it helps to laugh. It helps to feel a sense of camaraderie with these people who’ve accidentally landed in the same boat as him, and it helps to laugh in the face of danger. 

It isn’t fearless, but it’s something close. 

_Niall_ is something close.

The weirdest part of this all, probably, is that he usually doesn’t feel any different from a regular person just walking down the street. His power isn’t a weapon, isn’t even close, and as far as he can tell, he has no conscious control over it whatsoever. He’s a blank spot. He’s a shield. What good is it, though, if he can’t do anything with it? If the only person he can protect is himself? He’s thought about it plenty in the past, and he does what he can to save people, but he can only do so much.

An hour later and the mood in the room has sobered plenty, everyone wrapped up in their own thoughts. “How are you feeling?” asks Ashton, every bit of him brimming with exhaustion except for his eyes.

“I’ve been better,” admits Niall, “but I’m okay. Little thirsty.”

It makes everyone crack a smile. “You don’t feel like your mind is clouded over, or anything? Kinda fuzzy?”

He thinks about it, pausing, but he feels the same as he always does, minus the crushing feeling that something terrible is about to happen. “All clear,” he answers. “Why? Should I feel cloudy?”

“It’s probably better that you don’t,” says Nick, forehead a bit pinched. It must be worse for him, Niall realizes. Power amplification works both ways. “I think I’m feeling it enough for the both of us.”

“Do you think you’re making it stronger?”

Nick raises an eyebrow at him like it’s obvious, and yeah, maybe it is, but it’s not like Niall knows anyone with similar powers to compare him against. “That’s the point of me, innit?”

Niall concedes the point. “Guess so. I wonder if you’re make my shielding stronger, or if I just don’t feel it at all.”

There’s a pause, like everyone is thinking, but no one answers the question.

Time passes in lurches and jumps here. It’s been almost four hours since he got here according to Nick’s watch and the clock hanging on the wall, but it feels like it’s been days of staring at the wall and halting conversation and untying and retying his trainers. They’ve had no contact from Eve or anyone else outside, for that matter. Niall tried to bring it up, asking about food and plans and what she wants with them, but the others had pressed their mouths into thin lines and had pained eyes, and Niall didn’t ask again, figured he probably doesn’t want to know.

…

He gets to find out for himself, anyway, by the time the sun is low in the sky and casting long, reaching shadows over the white walls. 

The door opens and no one moves, air rife with tension and stillness. Eve walks in and, for a brief moment, Niall thinks about the four of them jumping up and physically overpowering her, busting their way out and using her as a shield, as a hostage, anything, and as soon as the thought comes, it’s passing through. It wouldn’t work. He, of all people, should know.

Eve looks right at him with her vicious, piercing eyes, and flutters her fingers in his direction. “Just that one, for now,” she says, impassive, and two of her guards walk in. Everyone is still frozen.

They reach for him, and Niall stands up, decides not to fight anything for the time being. He has to be careful with himself, now. There’s no use in provoking them. He wants to get through this in one piece.

It doesn’t stop his stomach turning. It doesn’t stop his mind racing. It doesn’t stop him cataloguing every possible escape route and realizing (again and again and again) that he’s trapped. The room is not small, necessarily, but it feels like it is, and as he’s led out of it, he almost feels like he can breathe again. Like the walls have stopped steadily closing in and the tightness in his chest can ease up a bit. The panic is still there, but it’s shifting forms.

Fuck claustrophobia, honestly.

They pull him along roughly until they’re around the corner of the hallway. Niall doesn’t complain or look back, just trudges ahead and tries to more or less keep up. It’s easier when he’s walking out of his own volition and not being dragged. At least, that’s what he’s going to assume. He’s trying to avoid the whole ‘getting dragged’ thing as best he can because it wasn’t fun when he was plucked from the base, and it sure isn’t fun now. “Where are you taking me?” he asks Eve, who is walking briskly ahead of him, hair swishing in its tight ponytail.

She doesn’t even turn around. “You’ll see.”

Niall huffs a little but doesn’t answer. He figures that someone needs to keep their head about them in all this mess, and he’s never had much of an explosive temper, so why not him? 

He does see, after they’ve turned several more corners and come to a new room. Upon first glance, it looks like a conference room, all clean lines and harsh lights. When he looks closer, though, he can see very clearly that it’s been repurposed. His stomach turns when he thinks about what Zayn told them, about compliance and advanced methods of persuasion.

He wants to ask if they’re going to torture him, but the words are stuck in his throat, and he’s scared to know the answer. 

One of the guards gestures toward a chair, and Niall sits down. Eve sits across from him, resting her folded hands on the wooden table. “It’s nice to finally meet you properly,” she says, and her smile is sweet and full of knives. He just blinks at her, and she pushes on, undeterred. “You seem like a smart boy, so I’m sure I don’t need to go into why you’re here. I’m going to ask you some questions, and you are going to answer them. Clear?” She’s still smiling as if they’re talking about the weather.

Niall swallows thickly. “And if I don’t?” It’s meant to be confident and defiant, steady, certain, but it comes out scratchy and more than a touch afraid. He wants to clear his throat but he also doesn’t want to give her the satisfaction of seeing him unsettled.

Her eyes harden. “Trust me,” she says, “you’ll want to. Shall we begin?”

…

The first time Niall felt truly useful on a mission, he was nineteen years old and had just re-dyed his hair. It was February, frigid and windy, and a girl about their age was screaming from the back of an alley, voice shrill and carrying all the way to the street. It was just Niall and Liam that day, walking back from grocery shopping with their scarves pulled close to their faces.

They didn’t even look at each other before bolting toward the sound.

“Are you okay?” called Niall, careening around the corner.

Liam echoed him. “Hello? Everything all right?”

Snow crunched beneath their boots, wet and loud. There was no answer. The dark alley wasn’t giving anything up without a fight, apparently, so they crept closer, able to make out two figures silhouetted against the chain link fence that cut off the alley from the next street. “Hey,” said Niall, still advancing slowly, “we heard some shouting, is everything okay here?”

This time, a young, male voice answered. “We’re fine,” said the boy, almost jovial if you ignored the arrogance dripping from his tone, “right, love?”

A girl, presumably the same one that was screaming, yelped. “Yeah, yeah, fine; we’re okay,” but she sounded all wrong, voice mucked up with tears.

Niall looked at Liam. Liam’s expression was dark and concerned, and Niall assumed his own was essentially a mirror image. The entire situation felt off.

“Why don’t we all walk out to the street and we can talk about it there?” Liam, always the voice of reason (at least, back in those days he was) spoke with the cadence of someone with their hands up, trying to put forth the least menacing image possible, as if he was trying to coax a wounded animal out from a corner.

The boy didn’t like that, unsurprisingly. “Why don’t you go ahead and mind your own business? We said we were fine, thanks; you can leave.”

Liam’s mouth twisted, but his voice didn’t change, stayed soft and not confrontational. Niall could feel his heart pounding in his chest, muscles tensed to fight, but he remained quiet, let Liam do the talking. “Just for my peace of mind, then. One minute, and we’ll let you go.”

“Are you with the police?” asked the girl, quickly.

Niall answered, “no, definitely not,” with a jaded amusement that could only really be understood if you were in on the joke.

A brief pause, and then: “Okay,” and it was the girl again, rushed like she was taking a chance by saying it at all.

Next to him, Liam braced himself, one palm half outstretched. He’d explained to them a long time ago that he doesn’t actually need to put his hands out to be able to shoot anything, but it helps him focus, and certainly doesn’t hurt when he’s trying to intimidate someone. Niall doesn’t need to focus to shield himself, but he understands why it could help. The girl walked forward, the boy right behind her, and Niall felt his heart start pounding a little louder like it was trying to prepare him to fight.

The next minute was a blur. The girl shrieked, Liam fired the boy into the wall and watched, aghast, as he crumpled into a heap, and Niall nearly jumped a meter into the air. It only took him a second to get his bearings, though, and before he knew it, he was rushing to the girl where she was bent into a crouch, shaking like a leaf.

“Hey,” he said, and she shrank back. “I’m not gonna hurt you, I promise.”

She looked up at him with bright eyes. “Is he unconscious?” she asked, which was a bit of a weird question, but Niall looked over his shoulder and checked, anyway. Liam was standing over the boy, wringing his hands, but his eyes were steady.

“Out like a light.” She glanced behind him, probably trying to be surreptitious in her distrust of him. Not that he could blame her, really, considering how fast everything happened. 

Niall raised his hand into a salute. “Scout’s honor, I swear to you,” and earned a watery smile for his efforts. She seemed to relax at that. “Why did you scream earlier?” He did his best to be soft but you can only be so gentle in a dirty back alley when the wind is whipping frigid at the back of your neck and tops of your ears and tip of your nose.

“What’s your name?”

“I’m Niall,” he answered, easy as a breeze, “and that’s my friend, Liam.” Liam gave the girl a small wave, and she just nodded at him, wary but accepting.

She toed at the icy ground with a boot as she stood up, dark hair whipping around under her beanie. “I was screaming because I knew he was going to hit me. I was hoping someone would hear. That was the first time I ever…” she trailed off, biting at her lower lip. “He’s my boyfriend. Or he was. I don’t know.”

“Do you have somewhere to stay that’s not with him?”

“My sister,” she answered, and Niall nodded, relieved. They chatted for a few more minutes until Niall was sure that the girl (and he never got her name; it’s one of the things he regrets to this day) was going to be okay. They’d have stayed longer, probably, but she was shivering something awful, and he and Liam were starting to feel the cold sinking even deeper into their bones as well.

He gave her his phone number, said to call if she needed anything, and her smile was small and grateful. He knew she wouldn’t use it, but. It was worth a try, anyway, and when he handed the phone back, her hands had stopped shaking.

“Take care,” he said, and her smile reached her eyes.

She shoved her hands into her jacket pockets. “Thank you,” she told him, “for everything, really. You, too, Liam. I don’t know what I’d have done if you hadn’t heard me.”

“Least we could do,” and it really was. “Do one more thing for us?” Niall waited for her to nod before he continued. “Call the emergency line and tell them there’s someone in this alley. Might be easier to do it anonymously. He might be a dick, but we also don’t want him to freeze to death.”

She laughed a little at that, redness high on her cheeks from the cold, and it was amazing how in just a handful of moments she had calmed herself down so tremendously.

They made sure she got into a cab okay, and then she was gone, and it was just Liam and Niall standing on the side of the empty street, snow starting to fall again, getting caught in their eyelashes and noses and hair. “You were good with her,” said Liam, and Niall shrugged, brushing it off.

“She was scared,” he answered honestly, “least I could do was make sure she was all right.”

Liam just looked at him for a minute, like he was trying to figure Niall out, and then he seemed to shake it off, grinned wide, and clapped Niall on the shoulder. “That’s why we love you, innit. C’mon, let’s get out of the cold.”

Niall agreed, and they managed to make it back to the base without any extremities freezing off, thankfully. The day devolved into a snowball fight, and then a FIFA tournament, and then a movie night, but Niall thought about the girl and what Liam said for a long time after, rolling it all around in his head.

From then on he assumed the role of their liaison, essentially. He’s the people person, the one to explain away the insanity of their lives, the impossibility of what they can do. He’s the one that stops them all from getting arrested at least once a week, which is ridiculous but also comes with the job, apparently.

He can’t save people, not the way the other boys can, but he can do this, at least. He can do this for them. Niall says the equivalent one day, and Louis gives him a look like he’s the most complicated person in the world.

“What do you mean?” he asks, cocking his head to the side. “Of course you save people. You do all the time.”

Of course you save people.

You do all the time.

…

It’s been ten minutes and Niall has already used every evasion tactic he knows. He’s moved on to improvising, ducking questions, and he’s starting to sweat. Eve is looking less and less patient.

“Let’s try that again,” she says, and her tone has gone from friendly to steel, smile long gone from her face, “who else do you know that has supernatural abilities?”

He squirms a little in his seat. “I don’t know if I’d call what we can do supernatural, really. Feels pretty natural to me. I didn’t even know I was anything special without someone telling me, so I don’t think we could be considered above average or not normal or whatever you’re saying.” He’s rambling, filling the space with words so she can’t get any comments in edgewise, feels like his life depends on stalling as much as he can, but she clearly gets sick of it. She cracks a palm down on the table, sound ringing through the room, and Niall stops dead, words catching in his throat.

“Last chance. I need names, and I know you have them.” Her countenance is a storm cloud. 

Niall looks at the door, uneasiness having blossomed into full-blown anxiety in the pit of his stomach, but there isn’t a way out of this one. He’ll have to keep bluffing, hope that she doesn’t catch on. Whatever she can do, she shouldn’t be able to tell whether he’s lying or not. He’ll have to bank on that. He uncrosses his arms and leans forward, holds the eye contact even though it’s making his skin crawl. “I don’t know anyone that you’re not already aware of,” he says calmly, and he can practically feel his pulse in his throat. He doesn’t have a lot of experience lying like his life depends on it, but he’s willing to bet he can be a quick learner. It’s not as if he doesn’t have the motivation.

Her eyes narrow. “I think we both know that that’s not true,” she answers, but she looks less manic, features schooled into something more considering than disbelieving.

“I don’t have any names for you,” and that, at least, is true.

She sizes him up, and Niall does his best not to shrink under her calculating gaze. He might be feeling defiant and angry, but there’s a sizable part of him that’s scared out of his wits by Eve and her guard people and the entire situation, really. After a pause, she clasps her hands together. “Fine,” she says thinly, “we’ll come back to it.” And Niall releases a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. “Let’s cut to the chase, then,” she continues, standing up, and then his stomach is turning all over again. “In order to be able to harness your ability, I need your permission.”

Niall is quiet, stares up at her from his seat, folds his hands in his lap and watches and watches and waits. “I’m not going to give it to you,” he finally says, lines of his body tense, “not even if you ask really nicely.”

She doesn’t smile. Neither does Niall. “I’m not asking. I’m demanding. And I’m not going to sit and wait for you to make up your mind about it, because you don’t have a choice in the matter.” She looks over her shoulder and nods at a guard, which is definitely not good, nope; Niall is not on board with whatever is about to happen. The guard walks over to where Niall is sitting and grabs one of his arms, wrenches it forward until Niall’s half-splayed on the table, and Eve has his hand between hers. The guard is still holding his forearm in a vice-like grip.

“You’re cutting off my circulation,” he chokes out, stunned, but no one moves, and the edge of the table is digging into his torso. He has to focus just to stay upright on his chair in this position, and he can feel the pulse of his heartbeat in his wrist.

Eve taps the back of his hand with a manicured finger, and she has cold, cold eyes. “Verbal permission and you’re free to go,” she tells him, and he clenches his jaw and looks up at her, angle awkward from where his face is pressed up against the wood.

“How do you know it’ll even work?” he counters. “The whole point of my power is that I’m immune. How do you know I won’t be immune to yours, too?”

She doesn’t even blink. “There’s only one way to find out, isn’t there?”

Niall breathes once, in, out, clenches a fist and unclenches it. “I’m not going to say yes,” he says, and it’s true; he won’t. He has no idea what they’re going to do to him, but he’s going to hold out for as long as he possibly can. He owes the city that much, and he owes his friends that much, and he owes himself that much. 

Eve twirls a shape into his palm with her fingernail, face impassive, and the sensation from the light touch shudders down his spine. “The others all said the same thing,” she remarks, and Niall tries valiantly not to think about the others, about what they must have gone through, about the stricken look on all of their faces when he was led out of the room.

“Try me,” he bites out.

The mean glint in her eye says that she’s more than willing to comply.

…

Niall is escorted back to the office with a black eye, numerous cuts and scrapes, and more bruises than he cares to count. “Hey,” he says, “good to see you all again.”

He ignores Leigh-Anne’s gasp, and Ashton’s wide eyes, and Nick’s bitten back curse. Eve will be back tomorrow bright and early, she’d promised, for more persuasion tactics. Niall’s entire body feels like an exposed nerve, and if he pays attention, he can taste blood in his mouth, and none of it matters.

“She’ll be back for me tomorrow, probably isn’t happy that I didn’t hand myself over, but she doesn’t have a lot of ammunition against me.” They haven’t asked, but he can tell that they’re dying to know what happened, or at least why he seems so cheerful. “Can’t threaten my family – haven’t seen my blood relations in a while; they’re not even in this country, and the other lads are at least aware they’d need to defend themselves. And I can take a punch or two, if it means setting her back. It’s worth it.”

The room is silent. Niall is exhausted but trying to be optimistic, or at least pretending to be as best he can. The truth is, he doesn’t know how much of this he can take, especially since it seems like she’d let him off the hook early to stew in his thoughts before bringing him back in for another round. He won’t let any of that show if he can help it, though.

A brief, loaded pause, and then: “She had my younger brother on the phone,” says Ashton quietly. “And I couldn’t…it wasn’t a choice, in the end. I had to.”

“I just got a point blank death threat,” is Nick’s contribution, and he’s almost smiling as he says it. “Nothing fancy for me.”

Leigh-Anne is looking down, twisting her hands in her lap. She doesn’t look eager to add anything, and Niall doesn’t blame her for a second. 

He’s about to say something when the door opens and a new person is shoved through and into the room. It takes all of two seconds for Niall’s heart rate to escalate tremendously and then settle back down, the fluctuation wreaking havoc on his nerves. As much as he hates to see anyone else here, he can’t help but be relieved. It’s not one of the boys. In fact, it’s not a boy at all.

She’s cursing, trying to kick back at the guards, but they impassively slam the door in her face, and she huffs under her breath, rubbing at her arm and fixing her hair before turning to look at the group, eyes blazing. 

“Bit late to the party,” says Niall, grinning, and he knows how it must look with his black eye and swollen face, but she just shakes her head at him with a slow smile that grows into a laugh. He holds his arms out and raises an eyebrow, and she comes in for a hug, gripping him tightly. She isn’t shaking, or trembling, but it seems like it could be a close thing. “Good to see you, Cher,” he mumbles into her hair, and she scoffs, so he amends it: “Good to see you’re alive. Not so great to see you here.” She’s so small. He forgets sometimes, that she’s small – her personality is so big that in his head she’s about twice his size, but she fits right into his arms.

She pulls back, and her posture is relaxed, but there’s a thin sheet of smoke simmering around her hands. “Good to see you’re alive, too. Hadn’t heard you’d gotten abducted, though, gonna have to have a talk with someone about being left out of the loop. Didn’t even know to expect visitors.” Her hands clench into fists in front of her as she speaks. “They dragged me out of my bed by my hair, and if that creepy blonde woman with that stupid smile hadn’t, like, sedated my power, I’d have burned the lot of them to ashes in a second. Now all I can manage is a few sparks, if that. Pisses me right off.”

“We can see that,” says Leigh-Anne, and Cher rolls her eyes, but she smiles like she can’t really help it, like she knows.

She settles in on the ground next to Niall, and they sit shoulder to shoulder. “What’s happened to you, then?” she asks, nudging him. “You look a right mess.”

“Thanks,” he says, “really, thank you, very sweet of you to notice.” She nudges him again, harder, eyes imploring like she didn’t just get here a minute ago herself, and he relents. “Eve and her posse roughed me up a little, that’s all. Gave me a bit of a big eye, and, ah, some bruises, feels like. I think she’s mad that she can’t get a read on me, and I don’t get whatever cloudy fuzzy headache she’s giving everyone.” He pauses, considering. “Also, I smiled more than I probably should’ve, made her angry.”

Nick shakes his head, looking astounded. “Can’t believe she hasn’t just held a knife to your throat already.”

“I’d call her bluff,” answers Niall slowly, and he realizes that he’s right, “she can’t kill me; she needs me as leverage. We don’t even know if she can mimic my power at all – I wasn’t the one she wanted, I don’t think. I’m, like, a hostage, or something.” He swallows hard, and then grins, and if it’s edging on hollow, then they don’t need to know that. “Just need to hold out a bit longer.”

“Hold out for what?” asks Ashton, and shrinks a little when all of the eyes turn to him, but he doesn’t back down. “I don’t mean to kill the mood, but what are we waiting for? For our friends to bust us out? I can see every move they’re going to make before they make it, and Eve can, too. And I don’t know how we could accomplish anything from in here ourselves when we’re being watched the way we are. I don’t know about you guys, but I don’t like my chances against any of those burly blokes – they knocked me out once, surely they could do it again.”

There’s a defiant tilt to his eyes that’s mostly undercut by the tired resignation in the lines of his face. Niall hates to admit it, but Ashton’s not exactly wrong. “Can you see them now?” he asks. “The lads? Can you see ‘em?” because he’s worried and also because he just wants to know if his friends are okay, or how they’re doing, or something, so sue him.

Ashton winces. “I can try,” he says slowly, after a pause, “but Eve’s in my head. I’d only get half a picture at best, and if they’re in trouble, it’d be too late, anyway.” He doesn’t say that it would be painful, or that he’s so exhausted, he can barely stand, but Niall hears it anyway in the pressing silence, knows he can’t be selfish about this.

“It’s fine, don’t worry about it.” His shoulders slump a little, and Cher presses her side more tightly against his. Her hands have stopped smoking. That is probably a good thing. “We should try to get some sleep, anyway,” he says. “It’s getting late, and I’m beat. Long day ahead of us tomorrow.”

“For you, maybe,” says Ashton.

Niall tilts his head quizzically, an unspoken question.

Ashton hops down from the desk he was sitting on and takes a place on the floor opposite Niall and Cher. “I can see the rest of us, even if it’s just blurry, and all we’ll be doing is sitting around, mostly. I mean, I’m okay with that, I guess, but I can’t see you at all. I’ve never been able to, with you shielding me all the time.”

“What,” says Niall, “so I could die tomorrow, and you’d have no idea? You wouldn’t even see yourselves reacting, or something?”

Ashton shakes his head, and then seems to think better of it, shrugging one shoulder. “You’re a blank spot. I don’t know how it works, but it’s like you don’t exist, almost, until something you’re involved in has already happened. Weirds me out a bit, to be honest, mate.” Niall tugs his lower lip between his teeth, not sure if this is good information or bad, or if he should even be surprised by this point. 

“I bet I could set you on fire if we could just get out of here,” muses Cher, and she sounds like she’s genuinely considering it.

Niall leans away from her just a little bit, but not far enough that they aren’t still more or less pressed up against each other. “Or, you could not do that,” he suggests helpfully, “because I don’t think I would like that. And apparently I wouldn’t even get any warning,” he adds, nodding toward Ashton. Cher laughs a tinkling laugh, but her eyes are narrowed, and Niall wouldn’t be surprised if she’s pouting about it.

“I’m exhausted,” yawns Leigh-Anne, “can we talk more about setting Niall on fire tomorrow?” She throws Cher a wink, and Niall acts betrayed for a split second before laughing. 

“Turning in for the night sounds good to me. Give me some time to think of a brilliant escape plan, bust us all out of here in a blaze of glory.” Niall’s joking, of course he is, but it would be nice, wouldn’t it?

Nick stretches outrageously. “We wouldn’t know your plan right up until the end, I’d think,” he says, playing along with Niall’s game, “You’d keep it a secret so the resident clairvoyant couldn’t sneak a peek, and then, at the last second, when all hope’s lost, you’d save the day. Proper heroic, innit? Like a film.” He chuckles, and then trails off when he seems to realize he’s the only one laughing.

“Nick,” says Niall, a little choked. His eyes feel like saucers, and he doesn’t want to let himself hope for anything, but–

“What?” Nick sounds baffled. “What did I say?”

The what-ifs are swarming in Niall’s head, and he has to shove them aside to even complete a coherent sentence. “Would it work?” he asks Ashton, and he knows he sounds a little out of his mind, but he needs to know if this is a possibility, if he could secretly scheme and set things in motion right when he’s needed most, if he could prove once and for all that maybe he is necessary, or needed, or the hero of the story – and it doesn’t matter; he knows that; he knows he doesn’t need to be a hero to be a good person or whatever, but if he can spare these people any pain, or even save the city…of course he’ll do whatever it takes. Of course he will.

Ashton’s eyes are wide, like he can’t quite believe this. “It might,” he says, and he sounds far away, “it really might. I mean, it’d better be a damn good plan, but – it could work.” He sobers, then, grounds himself and pushes on. “You couldn’t tell any of us anything about it, no hints, not even a single word. Not until it’s time to put it into play, or we could make things even worse. And that’s assuming you’ll be able to survive tomorrow, or come up with a plan by the time we need it. Niall – if she finds out you’re doing this…it’s dangerous.”

Niall passes him a lopsided smile. “Suppose I can’t even tell you if I’m doing it or not, can I?” No one answers, and Niall blinks once, twice, tries to get his breathing somewhere relaxed. “Let’s sleep, then,” he suggests, and there are no objections.

…

Two hours later, Niall is still awake.

It’s not that he isn’t trying to sleep – it’s more like his mind won’t slow down long enough for him to lose consciousness. Also, it isn’t as if they have pillows and mattresses, and for all he’d played it off earlier, the bruises on his face are making it difficult for him to find any comfortable positions. His cheekbone has been throbbing since he took the hit.

After a few more minutes of fruitless tossing and turning, he sits up and huffs, running a hand through his hair. He even winces doing that – Eve had gotten a good handful at one point, using it to make him hold her eye contact, and now his scalp is painfully tender.

Something moves on the other side of the room, and Niall can’t see what it is, only hears the rustling motion. It’s getting closer to him, and he leans back instinctively, and then almost jumps out of his skin when, “Can’t sleep?”

The breath whooshes out of him and he laughs a small, shaky, relieved laugh. “Nearly scared the pants off me,” he whispers back, “Christ.”

Leigh-Anne curls into him, resting her head on his shoulder. It only takes him a split second to shift to accommodate her, tucking an arm around her. This feels normal, familiar – like when they were younger and would fall asleep watching a movie, or the time she went through a bad breakup and they sat in silence for hours, just like this, and they have been safe spaces for each other more times than he can count. Aside from the boys, she’s his best friend. He tugs her in a little closer and shuts his eyes. “Sorry,” she answers belatedly. “I couldn’t sleep, either.”

“I can see that,” he says. He feels her soft smile in the darkness, tries to let it eat away at his anxiety. “It’s just- we can’t wait this out, can we? Either we do something, or she hurts a lot of people. It isn’t even a choice.”

“It’s always a choice,” she murmurs. “You just can’t imagine making the wrong one.”

Niall swallows hard. “What if it just makes things worse?” His voice is very small, even for a whisper.

He can feel Leigh-Anne breathing against him. “Then you make things worse.” For all she sounds matter of fact, it doesn’t make Niall feel much better. It’s all too easy to imagine things going terribly, horribly wrong, and if they do, Niall has a sinking feeling that he might come out the only of the group mostly unscathed. Or maybe he’s being ridiculous, and he’ll be the one to end up dead because he never properly learned self-defense, no matter how many times Liam tried to teach them how to throw a punch or how to take one. It’s not like he’s exactly in the best condition right now, and he knows it’ll just get worse tomorrow, and the day after, and however long it takes him to get out. Or however long it takes him to crumble under the onslaught of bruises that feel bone deep and seeing his own blood drying on his skin. The darkness in the room feels like it’s pressing down on him, and he breathes. Once. Twice. In and out until the panic recedes, until he’s left feeling drained and achy and sore all over.

“I don’t want to make things worse,” he whispers miserably, but there’s no answer. Leigh-Anne is already asleep.


	6. ZAYN

Ruthlessness tastes bitter, but Zayn has decided to embrace it like an old friend. “I don’t care,” he seethes, and he can hear that Liam is contemplating throwing his hands in the air. He doesn’t, which shows impressive restraint, because Zayn can feel his irritation and frustration growing beyond what he can handle. He knows he’s being difficult; he just can’t help it, and hearing it echoed back to him in Liam’s thoughts might actually drive him up the wall.

“Do you really think it’s worth it if we just-“ _storm in and get ourselves killed_ , Liam is about to say, but Zayn is thinking about compliance and Niall alone and in pain, and it’s their fault, and he can’t handle it at all.

“I don’t care!” He drags a hand roughly through his hair, doesn’t care if it makes him look half wild. “Everything I’ve done up to this point has made things worse. Everything. So if I have to go in there and risk my life, then I will. Nick is in there, and Ashton, and Leigh-Anne. Niall is in there, and everyone is fine with leaving him behind and for who even knows what to happen to him?” He’s horrified to find himself choking up, voice already rough from all the smoking he’s been doing lately. He cuts himself off, takes a step back away from Liam and feels his chest rising and falling, evidence of exactly how worked up he is.

On another day, maybe, Liam would reassure him, would wrap him in a tight hug and try to fix everything with a few moments of steadiness. And on another day, Zayn would let him.

Today is not a normal day, though; Liam is upset, too, and guilty, too, and agitated, too. “You think I don’t care?” he asks, voice low and dangerously angry. 

Zayn refuses to back down. “So just sitting around and twiddling our thumbs waiting for something to happen is how you show you care? Niall is still there, and it’s been days, and who knows what they’re doing to him?” His voice is too loud in the empty house, but Harry and Louis have gone on a food run (even people in situations as dire as theirs need to eat, regardless of how easily they’d lost their appetites) so there’s no one else here to hear him, anyway.

Liam’s jaw clenches. “Last time we charged in…do you remember how that ended?” Zayn doesn’t say anything, and Liam sags a bit, shoulders relaxing out of their tense lines to carry defeat. “I can’t do that again, not if we can avoid it. I’m not saying we should do nothing; I’m saying we should be smart about it. We can’t just barge in through the front doors and hope for the best.”

“She only got to Niall because we literally left him alone and handcuffed.” He wants to flinch as he says it, but he doesn’t. There’s something masochistic in him that likes holding all of the blame, that wants to make sure everyone knows that it was his idea, his _fault_. 

“What if she’d been there when we ran in, instead? She would’ve just taken one of us. We couldn’t have known.”

Most of Zayn’s anger has tempered into a simmer of frustration by this point. “Harry can just jump away; you could kill the lot of them before they even got to touch you; Louis’ the most stubborn person I’ve ever met, I’m sure he could-”

“ _You_ , Zayn,” interrupts Liam, quiet but insistent, and his eyes look pained. “I’m talking about you.”

“Better me than any of you,” he shoots back, but his fury is smudging out like a dying star. He twirls a ring around his finger for something to do with his hands.

And the thing is, he means it. He means it right down to his bones, can’t imagine what he’d do if something went wrong and it wasn’t him. It’s like an audible click the moment he hears Liam realizing he isn’t getting through to Zayn. “Do you know what it would do to me?” Liam asks, almost casually, and oh, this is dangerous.

Zayn swallows and looks at Liam and doesn’t say anything, feels like a deer caught in headlights under his imploring gaze.

“It would kill me,” he says, answering his own question, and Zayn goes to protest, but Liam holds up a hand. “Maybe not all at once, but knowing that I let that happen….” He pauses, trying to collect himself. Zayn can hear his thoughts rushing, pushing, all trying to surface at once. “I don’t want anyone to get hurt,” and that sounds more like day-to-day Liam; that’s familiar. “But if I lose _you_ – I don’t think I could come back from that, Zayn.”

Zayn wants to kiss him, wants to shut him up, and push him down onto the couch, and forget about everything but the cramped space, and Liam’s mouth. Instead, he says: “I don’t want us to lose anyone,” and his voice has gone small, “but we can’t do nothing.”

“We have to be smarter,” says Liam, helplessly, like he has no idea how they can achieve that but also like he knows they need to try.

Distantly, Zayn hears Harry and Louis come in through the front door, voices hushed – it’s odd to hear when the two are usually so full of light, egging each other on, loud and bright and rambunctious – but Zayn is looking at Liam and only at Liam, feels his heartbeat in his throat. “I know,” he says, instead of _how are we going to save anyone if we can’t even save ourselves?_

Zayn walks over to the couch and sinks down onto it, feels Liam do the same beside him. “’M sorry,” murmurs Zayn.

Liam just hums. “It’s okay to be angry. The whole situation’s rather fucked, innit?”

And, well, it’s not like anyone can argue with that. “I was never angry at you, though,” he clarifies, knowing he needs to, “I shouldn’t have said what I did – none of this is your fault, and I basically suggested another suicide mission to fix the mess we made by going on the first one. You were right.” Zayn is not usually excellent at swallowing his pride, but- it’s _Liam_. It isn’t a question of pride.

He can hear Liam thinking it over, deciding what to say. Zayn has come to learn that it matters what Liam chooses to say – he knows Zayn can hear him, but he still tries to pick his words so carefully. “We need backup,” Liam finally answers. “We can’t do this on our own; there are too many of them.”

“It’s risky,” says Zayn. “And we don’t even know if they’d agree.” But Liam has already basically won Zayn over. It’s a good idea. It’s a start, at least.

Louis wanders in, then, quiet. He has tired eyes, and his hair is matted down with rain, making him look more like the boy he was when Zayn met him, young, and ragged, and only barely keeping it together. He passes Zayn and Liam cups of piping hot tea, and the warmth seeps through Zayn’s hands right to his core. “You looked like you could use them,” Louis shrugs, picking at the hem of his jumper. 

“Thank you,” says Zayn, just as quietly. Exhaustion is pressing at him from all sides. He isn’t the only one. “You look like you could use a nap.”

“I think all of us could,” offers Liam. “We can talk more after, get our heads together once we’ve gotten some rest.” He smiles at Louis almost timidly, and Zayn can hear him remembering the night before Zayn went missing, and the shouting, and the situation reorients itself into the peace offering it is.

Louis nods, not quite smiling, but his features have smoothed out. “I’ll tell Harry. He thinks I don’t notice, but he’s been wobbly on his feet, lately, more than he usually is. The rest will be good for him, I think.”

“Back here in a few hours, then,” says Zayn, and they drag their weary, tired bodies to their respective bedrooms.

When he gets to his room, Zayn kicks his shoes off and collapses onto his bed, and it only takes a handful of seconds for him to sink into sorely needed sleep.

…

They congregate for dinner, heating up the takeout Harry and Louis picked up, and there isn’t much conversation, but it’s clear that everyone is in better spirits than they were this morning. “It’s got to be tomorrow,” Louis is saying, punctuating the point by waving around a piece of chicken he’s got speared on his fork.

“Tomorrow,” repeats Harry, nodding, and for all he looks like, he agrees Zayn can hear him freaking out more than a bit. He’s thinking in images more than words, anxiety coloring the white walls of the office building three shades darker, remembering the way Ashton was dragged away limply, and how close Harry was to ending up the same way.

And then he hears how it took Harry three tries to even jump home, how he ended up in a building he’d never seen before the first time and almost had a full-blown panic attack, how Eve’s cold, murky fog was muffling his concentration and accuracy, how all he could do was anchor himself as tightly to Louis as possible (it used to be Zayn that he’d anchor to; it was Zayn that he practiced on every single day) and launch himself through space. 

How he doesn’t know if they’ll all make it out alive. How he’s terrified to end up somewhere he doesn’t recognize. How he’s terrified to end up alone, staring back at a path of destruction and realizing he’s only alive because he’s lucky.

Zayn nudges at Harry’s foot with his own under the table, grabbing his attention. “You don’t have to come,” and even as he says it, he knows Harry will protest outrageously, but. He feels like he at least owes Harry the option. Maybe it’s his big brother instinct, or maybe he just wants Harry to stop remembering, wants to snap him out of it. 

“Excuse me?” asks Harry, and his tone has gone low and cutting.

And shit, this is not what Zayn meant to do at all. Liam and Louis have gone quiet, passing a wide-eyed look across the table. “I mean that if you don’t want to come, you don’t have to.”

Harry’s eyes are still narrow, but underneath the fire there’s hurt. “I’m not scared,” he argues, and Zayn doesn’t want to fight with him on this.

“I’m not saying you’re scared; I’m just saying that if it makes you uncomfortable…”

“What, so I can’t even think about anything without you jumping all over me for it?” It isn’t the first time Zayn has gone through this with someone, but it’s been so long since the last time it happened, and it stings. He’d never meant for it to be a breach of trust. He can’t help what he hears, and he can’t help reacting to it sometimes, wanting to make things better, or help people vocalize what they can’t say out loud. People keep secrets for a reason, hold their feelings inside for a reason, keep their thoughts to themselves for a reason, and Zayn usually remembers that. He tries to be respectful. He does.

“I put my foot in my mouth,” he concedes, contrite, tripping over himself to fix it. “Harry, I’m sorry.” But Harry’s already standing up, pushing his chair out, walking away from the table, and leaving his half eaten plate in his place.

“I’ll go talk to him,” says Louis, moving to follow Harry (which is probably for the best), and then it’s just Zayn and Liam and the suffocating silence.

“I didn’t mean to-“

“I know,” interrupts Liam, steady as ever. “We’re stressed out, and our emotions are all over the place. Just go talk to him later; it’ll be fine.” His voice softens, then. “It’s okay.”

Zayn nods, jerky, and then nods again, and stands up to clear the table. He’s lost his appetite, anyway.

Liam looks at him as he walks by, and Zayn doesn’t know how to place it. Gentle, maybe, or soft. He pushes the swirling feeling out of his stomach and goes outside to smoke a cigarette or four, a habit he needs to kick – it just doesn’t have priority, right now, and it helps to look out the balcony and blow billowing smoke into the air, watch it curl until it’s dissipated entirely.

Hours pass, and the sun sinks in the sky.

He finds Harry sitting out by the fire pit. The sparks light up his face in an orange glow, and he’s wearing an oversized jumper, and his hands are stuffed in the sleeves to keep them warm. Zayn sits next to him. Harry doesn’t look up.

They sit in the quiet for a bit, watching the night speckled with stars.

Zayn scoots closer, pressing his luck, but he probably shouldn’t have worried. As soon as he’s close enough, Harry leans over and puts his head on Zayn’s shoulder, wild curls tickling his neck. 

“I am scared,” says Harry, making an aborted shrugging motion. “I don’t want to be, but I am.” He huffs out a breath. “I keep remembering the day she took Ashton, and how I kept pushing for him to go, and-“

Zayn soothes a hand down Harry’s back. “You wish you could’ve done something different,” he supplies. He doesn’t have to say that they all know the feeling, that they all have been holding on to all kinds of guilt, and it’s setting them back.

“Bit stupid,” he says. _Really stupid, actually_ , he thinks, but Zayn doesn’t call him out on it.

“Join the club,” he says instead, shadow of a smirk ghosting his features. 

Harry groans, but he’s laughing a little, too. “We’re right idiots, aren’t we? The whole lot of us.”

“I think so,” says Zayn, and he’s smiling too.

“Idiots,” mumbles Harry, again, looking out at the shivering night, and he’s thinking mostly about fearlessness.

…

“Do you really think we can do this?”

“We can try,” insists Zayn. “And we need as many people on our side as we can get. Will you come?”

“Yes,” she says without hesitating, like she doesn’t even have to think about it, and Zayn blinks at the phone, surprised despite the fact that he probably shouldn’t be.

It takes him a moment to answer. “You’re sure? It’ll be dangerous, and you need to know that. It’s risky. Last time we went in, not all of us came back.” And that isn’t exactly the truth, but it’s the right idea, and he doesn’t feel particularly inclined to rehash the whole story, anyway. “You have to be sure, because you’ll be risking your lives, you and the other girls.”

“Leigh-Anne is in there,” she shoots back, and Perrie sounds like she’s made of steel. “Of course we’re coming. What time do you need us there?”

Zayn tries to hide his smile, feels his mouth twitch around the edges. He’s scared out of his wits, but it’s about thirty times more manageable knowing Perrie and her girls will be there. They’re good friends; he and Perrie tried to date right out of school and realized they were better the way they are now, and they never lost touch. He found his boys, and she found her girls, and they’re still here. They’re still right here. “Half three tomorrow,” he tells her. “Bring your game face.”

She laughs, tinny over the phone line but still warm. “Only if you bring yours, babe.”

Harry walks into the room, then, and flashes Zayn a sweet grin and a thumbs up. “We got Michael, Luke, and Calum on board,” he stage whispers, and Zayn releases a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding.

“Hey, Perr? I gotta go. See you tomorrow.”

“Bye, Zayn,” she chirps, and if he shuts his eyes, he can pretend they’re eighteen again, lost in that breathless summer heat and each other. But her voice has a knife edge to it that matches his own, and they’ve both grown up plenty since then, and tomorrow is going to be brutal in ways Zayn knows he hasn’t even begun to comprehend.

They hang up, and Zayn turns back to Harry. “Any luck with the others?”

“Louis’ on the phone with Eleanor right now, I think.” Harry very carefully does not pull a face at it, but he might as well with the way his thoughts are mutinying. Zayn chokes down a laugh. “She sounds like she’ll be game, though, or at least she probably will be. She isn’t the type to back down from a challenge.” He says it begrudgingly, Zayn can hear, but they all know it’s the truth. The girls they’ve become friends with are all unwaveringly fierce.

If they can get Eleanor on board, this might not be such a long shot after all. Her ability to manipulate technology could be the thing that saves them, or at least gives them a leg up. Eve will know they’re coming (she will know nearly everything, if just in splashes and blurs), but they will come with everything they have.

“Liam’s talking to Sophia.” And that will be a hard sell; they all know that, but they need her, too. He tunes into Liam in the next room, listens in just enough to get a feel for it. “I think he’s got her,” he says, wonderingly, and then thinks that he shouldn’t be surprised – anyone faced with the brunt of Liam’s earnest determination is bound to crumble eventually; it’s only natural.

Harry looks equally stunned, and he asks Zayn, cautiously optimistic, “do you really think we could have a shot, then?”

Zayn thinks about it.

They have a good number of people now, a real life squad that’s going in as a united front, and they know more or less what to expect. They’ll be ruthless, or at least Zayn will be, and that’s where they have an upper hand – the guards, Eve, the whole of their opposition will be trying to take them alive. They’re all infinitely more valuable alive.

The thing is, Zayn will do just about anything to stop Eve, or at least break Niall and whomever else he can out of there. His conviction might make him a little mad, but it’s better that way, means he won’t give up for anything.

“Yeah,” says Zayn, realizing that he means it with every fiber of his being, “I think we do.”

…

The office building is enormous and intimidating, all sleek lines and plates of glass, and it doesn’t look any different than the last time they came, but there’s an energy in the air that wasn’t there before. Zayn can’t hear much of anything besides the thoughts of his teammates, tries not to worry too much about what that means. Harry is still a little wobbly on his feet (concussion, they think, but there wasn’t time; once this is done with, they’ll need to take him to a hospital, probably), Louis looks like he’s ready to kill someone, all of the girls are fierce and made of steel, and Liam blows the door down without lifting a single finger.

They charge.

At first, it’s oddly quiet. The intern’s face is frozen in surprise, and they burst right past him without looking back. Zayn begins to barrel up the stairway, feels Louis hot on his heels, and his heart is beating hard in his throat. This is it. This is what they’ve been waiting for.

He goes to yank the door open, but he’s dragged back by the shirt and almost stumbles down the stairs. He wheels around with a fist in the air, but it’s just Liam, hands held up defensively. “You’re not going in first, idiot,” says Liam, and Zayn rolls his eyes, but Liam’s nudging past already, pulling Louis with him. He turns back for a split second with his fingers wrapped around the handle, meets Zayn’s eyes. “You ready?”

Adrenaline is burning through Zayn’s blood. Liam is boyish smiles and flexing biceps and playful eyes even now. “I’m ready,” he nods, and Liam throws the door almost off of its hinges.

Immediately, they’re trying to force themselves into the room, Liam blasting as many people as he can out of their way. Zayn is listening as hard as he can, realizes he can hear the guards, though it’s even harder than it was last time. That means something, he registers in the back of his mind, but he can’t recall what as he’s swinging under a fist and trying to stay behind Liam – mostly to not get killed or dragged off, but also to keep an eye on him, just in case. Just in case.

He looks at Perrie, and she makes a complicated face that involved a lot of eyebrow movement. “Cover your ears!” he yells as loud as he can, slapping his hands over his own, and that’s all the warning anyone gets before Perrie is screaming.

Glass breaks. It looks like a few of the guards’ ears are bleeding. They press forward.

Zayn is listening for Eve, trying to pick her mind apart from the rest. It’s hard with all of the shielding she’s got going on – he’s fairly certain Niall hasn’t given her verbal consent, considering he can hear anything at all, but she’s getting stronger, and he feels like he’s wading through molasses. 

The lights in the ceiling start bursting, one after the other, and that must be Eleanor, static lifting her hair around her shoulders and fingers sparking. “I can’t break the mainframe,” she yells, “but I can sure as hell find a way to keep some of them occupied.” And Zayn never doubted that she could. There’s broken glass littering the floor. Her eyes look like they’re full of fire, and then he loses sight of her as she gets buried in a swarm of people.

Harry appears next to him, breathing heavily. “Any luck?” he asks, throwing a punch and connecting it before jumping to Zayn’s other side.

“None yet,” he answers, and then he sees a flash of silver out of the corner of his eye, feels his stomach drop. 

Three guards surround Louis, and one of them has a knife in her hand, gleaming brightly along with her smirk, which looks wrong and twisted on her face. “Louis!” he screams, but it’s too late. Louis isn’t looking in the right direction; there’s no way he’ll be able to get away, and it’s like everything happens in slow motion.

The girl’s arm is swooping down, small knife aimed at the space right beneath Louis’ ribs, and- and-

And that’s Harry, materializing right in front of Louis, taking a knife to the abdomen and crumpling to the floor in a graceless heap, blood already starting to soak through his shirt. And that’s Louis shouting like the sound is being ripped out of him, eyes huge and horrified. And that’s Liam shooting down everyone in his path trying to get to them.

And that’s Perrie running out the door with Jade, both of them supporting a badly wounded Jesy, shooting Zayn a helpless glance, tears wet in her eyes. And Calum, Luke, and Michael are nowhere to be seen, either dragged away alive to be locked up with the others or having escaped themselves.

And this is Zayn, taking a step toward Harry and Louis only to be stopped in his tracks by a cool point of metal at his throat.

It’s like time freezes completely. Louis is kneeled over Harry’s body, and it’s a horrible reminder of the last time, except now Louis’ hands are pressed over Harry’s stomach, and he can’t get any traction, too slippery with blood, and Zayn knows without having to listen in that it isn’t going to be enough.

The room is quiet aside from Louis’ ragged breathing, and Harry’s barely audible whimpers, and Eve saunters in slowly, high heels clacking against the tiled floor. Her lips are blood red, and she smiles at Zayn like she has a secret. He fights the urge to spit at her feet, or worse, and he only fights it because there’s literally a knife at his throat.

“Nobody moves a muscle,” she says, and then. “Bring him in.” Two of her cronies come up the staircase dragging Niall, and the breath leaves Zayn’s body in a single whoosh. He’s alive, and that’s good, but there’s a giant, ugly bruise taking shape on the side of his face, and there are scratches on his arms, and he looks altogether worse for the wear. He’s struggling viciously in the arms of his captors, thrashing about, but it’s clear he isn’t strong enough to break their hold. “Thought you’d like to see them,” she says to Niall, smiling sweetly, and he narrows his eyes at her, glare so icy it’s a wonder she doesn’t freeze on the spot.

And then he sees Zayn, stops cold, and starts struggling again, even more desperately. “Knock it off,” she tells him, and Niall looks at Zayn and then he settles, stiff and unmoving.

“Thank you,” she smiles. “Isn’t it so much nicer when we’ve all calmed down?” No one answers her, but she doesn’t seem bothered. “Over here, please,” she tells the guard, and Zayn feels himself being dragged to her side. Liam makes an aborted movement like he wants to knock down the whole building and kill them all, but Zayn goes willingly and barely looks up. He doesn’t know who else is in danger right now, and it isn’t worth it to get himself killed before he even gets to see how it all pans out.

Niall’s eyes are full of fire. Harry is still bleeding; Louis is still hunched over him trying desperately to stop it from getting worse, and Zayn has to look away before he can catch sight of Harry’s quickly paling face. Liam is stock still and staring right into Zayn’s eyes, and Zayn can hear him thinking, can hear _not him not him not him please_ and then, almost tentatively, _Zayn? You can hear me, right?_ It’s as clear as ever, Eve’s power not extending quite that far, or else she’s not bothering, and Zayn raises an eyebrow and twitches his lips, hopes it’s enough. It is. _I know you’re going to hate me for this, but I don’t have a choice, okay? It has to end here._ And no, this doesn’t sound good, Zayn doesn’t like where this is going at all. _You’re going to hate me, but I need you to let me do this._

And then Liam takes a shaking step forward, and Zayn’s heart goes into overdrive, nearing full-fledged panic. “I could level this building in a second,” says Liam, preternaturally calm, biting through the hush of the room. “I could kill every one of us right now if I wanted to.”

Eve looks intrigued, small smile playing at the corner of her lips like she’s excited that Liam’s willing to play ball with her. “And?”

“You couldn’t take me alive even if you tried. I’d just blast everything around me to pieces, including myself if I had to. I’d do it.” And the scary thing is that Zayn knows he’s deadly serious. “You could try to win me over, but it wouldn’t work.”

She looks less happy now, but still interested, still curious. “I could just take your friends,” she answers, “or kill them, right now. You aren’t the only one here I have my eye on.” She looks at Zayn, and Liam’s jaw clenches along with his fists. Zayn wills him to keep it together, to not rise to her bait.

“They’re not as powerful as I am,” says Liam, and Zayn wants to roll his eyes, but Liam is giving nothing away, and he isn’t technically wrong, is the thing. “You need me.”

“I really don’t,” she shoots back.

“Okay,” says Liam, reevaluating, edging his tone back into negotiation, “okay. But you want me. You want me more than you want them. You don’t have anyone else that can do what I do, or on as big of a scale as I can.” And Zayn can hear it in his thoughts that Liam’s bluffing a bit, hazarding a guess, but it seems to work because Eve is smiling again like she knows exactly where this is going.

She walks over toward Zayn, and when Liam makes to move, she tuts at him, holding a finger out. Liam freezes, frustrated, but doesn’t let it show on his face. “So,” she asks him, raising an eyebrow. “What do you propose we do?”

And Liam, stupid, brave Liam, puts his hands up to hover by his head, universal surrender. “Take me,” he says, no trace of fear in his features, only painfully genuine determination. “Take me and let them go. I’ll go with you willingly, but you let the rest of them walk.” He keeps giving himself away, keeps looking at the knife on Zayn’s neck like he can’t help it, and she notices (of course she notices; how could she not when Liam is so bleeding obvious?), and then she counters.

“If you come with me,” and here she tucks a piece of hair behind her ear, “I’ll take the knife off of this one here.” She nudges Zayn, and he struggles to keep his balance, trying to keep the knife as far from his actual neck as he possibly can when the guard is pressed all up along his back. “Everyone else is fair game.”

And Zayn can’t stay quiet any longer because Liam looks like he’s contemplating it, so he opens his mouth and says, “Liam,” like a warning, because if he does this then Zayn will never forgive him for as long as they both live. He means to sound stern, but he sounds more like he’s about to cry. “Liam, please, don’t-“

But he’s interrupted by Louis’ frantic voice. “Harry, too,” he interjects, and all eyes are on him. He pushes on, nervous, every line of his face painted with fear and frustration. “Harry gets to walk, too; he’s too injured. He needs a hospital. I can’t-” and he cuts himself off with a choked sound. Zayn wants to strangle him, but he also understands. Niall is sagging in his captor’s arms, bruises so dark against his flushed complexion.

Liam swallows hard and looks at Zayn with pained eyes, thinks _I have to. I’m sorry; I can’t let them do this to you or to Harry, Zayn. I’m so sorry; I don’t have a choice_ , and then he looks away and nods, and Zayn feels so, so cold. “Those are our terms,” he says, squaring his shoulders, always playing superhero, always the martyr, and her grin is like Christmas.

“So noble of you,” she says, her eyes sparkling with delight, and Zayn wants to stab her through the throat. “I’ll do you one better – the shield is more trouble than he’s worth, and I’ve no need to lock him up here, poor fighter than he is.” Niall’s hand twitches like he wants to punch something, but he doesn’t say anything. “You can have him back, how’s that?”

“Deal,” says Liam, too fast, and Louis is standing up to join him on shaky knees, eyes on Harry the entire time he does so. Zayn catches Liam’s gaze helplessly, and Liam swallows once and turns away, facing Eve and only Eve.

She claps her hands together, giddy and professional all at once. “Oh, lovely. This isn’t quite what I had in mind – I did want the mind reader – but a deal’s a deal, and I’m true to my word. Release him,” she says, fluttering her fingers toward Zayn, and he’s freed and shoved to the floor, hard.

He coughs once, twice, horrible full-body shakes, and stumbles over to where Harry is still lying, looking alarmingly pale. His chest is rising and falling steadily, but there’s blood spattered on his lips. “Now!” he hears Niall yell, distantly, desperately, but Zayn can’t focus on too many things at once right now – Harry is his priority; Harry has to be his priority. He needs a hospital. Zayn needs to rush him out of here right this instant, but he can’t stop staring at the tense line of Liam’s back as he walks away.

And then there’s the smoke.

It curls in through the vents and the doorway; he can smell the burn of it, and it’s getting thicker and darker with every passing second. Harry is starting to stir. Zayn hushes him absently, trying to place the source of the smoke, and then everyone seems to realize that the building is _on fire_ , and at that point Zayn is picking up Harry and running like hell for the stairway on the opposite side of the room, the one that doesn’t look like a doorway to the underworld and is mostly smoke-free. 

There are fighting sounds as he starts to make his escape, some shouting and the sound of collisions, but Zayn doesn’t have time to look back, just keeps moving, moving, moving. He’s a little winded, because Harry is dead weight and unconscious and bigger than Zayn is, but it won’t stop him. He refuses to let anything stop him.

It’s getting harder to see as he stumbles down the stairs, and he’s thankful that they’d only had to go up one flight. He careens across the empty lobby and out the door, and places Harry on the curb, yelling at any and all random passerby to call the emergency line.

His entire body is humming to run back inside, but no one seems to even be willing to give him the time of day. “Anybody!” he shouts, “We need an ambulance, please!” and then he feels a hand on his shoulder and practically jumps out of his skin.

It’s Louis, Niall close behind him. “Easy, mate,” he says, but he’s coughing and his eyes are dark with worry. “Just us, we’ll get him to a hospital; he’ll be fine.”

“Where’s Liam?” asks Zayn, helplessly, because he has a one track mind, and Liam should be out here. They should be making their triumphant escape out of here right now, and there’s a bad taste in his mouth that won’t go away until he’s sure Liam is out of harm’s way.

“Still in there,” answers Louis, “trying to get out the others before the whole bloody building collapses.”

Zayn nods, makes a split-second decision that doesn’t really feel like a decision at all. “I’m going back in,” he says, and cuts off the inevitable protests. “I can’t leave him in there. This is it; it ends here. It has to, and it has to end with all of us alive.”

Louis fixes him with a hard, searching stare. “If it starts going down, get the fuck out.”

Zayn nods again, throat tight, and goes to run back into the building. Before he makes it even a few steps, though, he turns around and runs back, pulls Niall into a crushing hug. “I’m sorry,” he mutters, and Niall squeezes him back just as tightly.

“Go get Liam,” he mumbles back, “and don’t get your stupid ass killed in the process. If everything goes right, the building should go down in ten minutes tops.”

Zayn swallows a wet laugh and lets go, stepping away and sprinting into to the office building. The sprinklers have gone off, so it’s mostly acrid smoke and a mess of confusion. The stragglers limping out of the lobby pay him no mind, and he catapults himself up the stairs despite his lungs already burning, the urge to cough screaming through his body until he’s doubled over halfway up the stairwell. He shakes it off, tears in his eyes, and keeps pushing until he catches the thread of Liam’s thoughts.

There are holes in the walls, burning things that mark Liam’s trail, that show where he’s been. There are bodies on the ground, some dead, most unconscious but probably alive. Zayn isn’t going to wait long enough to find out. He runs up another flight of stairs. Liam is thinking very loudly, or else Zayn is just used to listening to him. There are some curse words, some attempts at calming himself down (which is painfully reminiscent of their first meeting years ago), but mostly just an urgent rush of _go go go you have to save them you have to save all of them and get back out the boys need you Zayn will never forgive if you die_ , and Zayn is running, running, trying not to choke on the smoke and avoiding the smoldering steps, places where the floor has burned away.

“Liam!” he yells, and tries again, “Liam, come on! We need to go!” The ceiling is creaking perilously, and he almost careens into Ashton and Cher as he turns the corner. They give him half-crazed smiles as they sprint past him in the opposite direction, to freedom. The building is moaning. Zayn swallows his terror and swallows the panic and swallows the memories and keeps moving.

He spots Nick, too, running toward the exit, and then: “Zayn?”

It’s Liam, and Zayn runs toward him, crosses into the next room, and there he is, alive, whole, safe. Zayn is nearly there, he’s nearly-

He feels a sharp yank on his arm, and Liam yells, and Zayn doesn’t even turn around, just uses the momentum to throw his assailant to the side where the wall is weak, putting every bit of his strength into it. It’s Eve; he can feel her nails digging into him, can hear her cloying, sticky thoughts like drying blood, but he’s done with this, with the games, and she slams into the cracking plaster.

It isn’t enough. She’s only dazed for a quivering handful of seconds before she starts standing up, fire in her eyes, and Zayn realizes with a sinking feeling that she’s stronger than he is – maybe not physically, but whatever powers she’s absorbed have made her more resilient, and paired with her viciousness, he knows he can’t take her down alone, can’t keep doing this. She’ll just keep coming back. He turns to face her, and she grins, a horrible, awful smile that sends chills down his spine.

She won’t go down without taking him with her. They’re going to die in this building. Zayn can’t breathe.

A low warning cuts off his thoughts. “Not another step,” says Liam, looking at Eve, furious as Zayn as ever seen him, every line of his face dark and deadly serious, and she scoffs but stops.

She flexes her hands out in front of her and rolls her neck gently from side to side. “You’re all talk,” she says. “If you put enough pressure on this side of the room, the floor will collapse out from under both of us. Are you that confident? Are you that angry?”

Liam sounds conflicted, but he doesn’t look it. “I don’t believe you.” 

She takes a step forward.

Before Zayn can even blink, he’s thrown backwards, and he lands on his tailbone, pulling a startled sound from him. He scrambles back to his feet when he hears glass breaking, looks around wildly, but Eve is gone, catapulted through the third story window by a well-placed blast of energy. The edges of the hole where the window used to be are white hot.

“I called her bluff,” says Liam, but his voice is strange, and his hands are shaking. _I killed her_ , he’s thinking, over and over, awful, and guilt-ridden. _I killed her_ , but the building is groaning, and Zayn runs over and grabs his hand. “Hold on,” says Liam, pulling away, thoughts scattered, “just, hold on,” and he’s running away.

“Liam!” he yells, agitated and on the brink of a nervous breakdown, but there’s no answer.

Zayn groans and runs after him into the next room. Liam is half-carrying Leigh-Anne, supporting most of her weight, and Zayn helps him and tugs them both down the stairs and out through the smoldering, door-shaped hole as quickly as they can manage.

It feels like a miracle when they make it outside.

They can visibly see the others sag with relief when they come into view. Harry and Louis are gone, presumably to a hospital, but Niall is still there, waiting with Cher and Ashton and Nick, and people have gathered and started to point, but Zayn doesn’t care. It doesn’t matter; they’re out, and they’re alive, and they need to get out of this place before something else can go wrong.

“Some of them are still in there,” says Liam, sounding conflicted, “some of the guards, I mean. They weren’t all dead; they might come after us.”

“Finish it,” says Zayn, because it’s their only choice. Liam looks like he might cry, and Zayn would do it for him if he could, but soft-hearted Liam got the destructive energy blasts, and Zayn got the glimpses into other people’s minds, and there’s nothing any of them can do to change that. “Liam,” he urges as gently as he can, “you’re the only one who can do this.”

Cher, half of her hair burned beyond repair, and her hands still smoking, says, “he really isn’t,” but she’s unsteady on her feet, and she’s already thinking about how she can’t really expend the energy, and Zayn nudges Liam’s shoulder.

“It’s got to be you,” he whispers, and-

“Right,” says Liam, shaking himself a little, and he thrusts his hands out, grounding himself. Zayn steps off to the side, sees Leigh-Anne coughing up smoke, and Cher rubbing her back through it, sees Niall on the ground with his head in his hands, sees the shadow of a figure in the stairwell, and then there’s a sound like an explosion, and things start to break. _I did it_ , thinks Liam, hysterically, _I just did that. There are people in there_. Zayn moves to comfort him, to touch him, to do something, but he’s distracted by a horrible cracking sound, and a gush of hot air blowing his hair back from his face, firelight flickering in his eyes.

The building caves in on itself, finally, collapsing like a house of cards, and Liam falls to his knees with it.


	7. ZAYN/LOUIS

Before they drive back to the base, they drop Leigh-Anne, Nick, Cher, and Ashton off at their respective homes, upon request. Zayn feels uneasy about it, wants them to get checked out by someone with some medical experience even if it isn’t at a hospital, but apparently, of the lot of them, Niall is the one that took the most damage. The others are mostly fine.

He learns later that Niall was the only one to truly defy Eve, to stand up to her, to tell her no. She couldn’t get her reaching fingers into his brain, couldn’t bend his will, couldn’t find a way to make him budge. And he paid for it. 

Niall insists that the others get home with a quick nod and hard eyes that dare Zayn to challenge him. Zayn holds the gaze for about four seconds until he decides he’s far too tired to fight anything right now.

So, begrudgingly on Zayn’s part, they make the rounds.

Cher is the last to go, and she says goodbye to Niall with a searing kiss, a fist in his shirt, and a harsh bite to his lower lip, grinning over her shoulder as she walks away, ash still clinging to her cheeks and narrow hips swinging from side to side. 

“What a woman,” mumbles Niall, mostly to himself, and Zayn and Liam laugh, but the happiness is small and fragile, and it’s the first thing Niall has said since they left over an hour ago. Zayn can hear Liam thinking about the same thing, concerned about Niall, but he’s also freaking out about what happened at the very end, the crushing part, the burying bodies under a dizzying swoop of pure energy part. 

The part where Zayn told him to do it, and now Liam has to carry that guilt for the rest of his life when he already shoulders so many burdens. Liam is thinking about pain, is thinking that he feels sick. Liam is thinking that he feels like he could cry.

Liam is tense in the driver’s seat, knuckles white where they grip the steering wheel.

Zayn keeps his mouth shut.

…

It’s another several hours before they get any kind of update from Louis, and when they do get news, it’s in the form of a curt text message – Harry will need multiple blood transfusions, stitches, and will remain at the hospital overnight for observation, and that’s all. Zayn feels hollow relief but mostly just exhaustion.

Harry is alive. It’s all he feels capable of processing right now.

_You ok?_ he sends Louis, because not a single one of them could possibly be in good spirits right now, and Zayn might be on the verge of collapse, but it doesn’t stop him worrying, knows that Louis will run himself ragged trying to make sure Harry is all right without thinking about his own well-being.

Louis doesn’t answer, and Zayn shoves his phone back into his jacket, scrubbing a hand over his face.

He hears footsteps in the doorway and doesn’t even need to look up – there’s only silence, and usually he can hear Liam from ages away. Zayn stretches a bit on the couch, and then shifts, making room, but Niall doesn’t sit next to him, just stands in the doorway with his hands in his pockets.

“Hey,” says Zayn. “Harry’s stable.”

Niall nods. “Yeah, I heard. ‘S good.”

“Yeah,” answers Zayn, and the silence is awkward, and Zayn _hates_ it, _hates_ that one of his best friends on this entire screwed up planet can barely look him in the eye. He can’t even latch on to Niall’s thoughts to try to revive the conversation, just stares down at his shoes and lets the guilt crush into him like a tidal wave.

“I’m still mad at you,” says Niall, suddenly, “so mad, but it’s just- it’s so stupidly good to see you’re okay after all that. When I was in that office, I didn’t know…I didn’t know if you guys were okay, or even alive, and it just-” he gulps a breath and slows down, “I’m really mad, but I was so scared that something would have gone horribly wrong by the time I got out.”

Zayn takes a chance and meets Niall’s eyes. They’re warm, but there’s still an undercurrent of hardness, of coldness, and it’s so unlike Niall that Zayn feels himself shrinking back into the couch. “I’m sorry,” he says, and Niall’s face doesn’t change. “I’m so sorry,” and he feels absolutely wretched, wants to go back and change almost every decision he made, but they’re here now, and things are stilted and wrong, and all of them are alive, but it still feels like he should’ve done better. He looks back down at the floor. “We had no right to do that to you, and I understand if you can’t forgive me; I get it. I wouldn’t forgive me either, I don’t-“

He doesn’t even know what else he’d have said if Niall hadn’t cut him off right there. “Zayn,” he interrupts, gently but firmly, and his features have softened. “I mean, I’m pissed off that you left me handcuffed to a radiator, yeah, ‘course I am.” Zayn nods mutely. “And I’m probably gonna be mad for a while, but I love you, man.”

Zayn’s entire body feels like it’s simultaneously buzzing and on the verge of collapse, and he’s been snapping in and out of the conversation, but he’s here now. He stands up, walks to Niall, and buries his head in the juncture between Niall’s neck and his shoulder. “I’m sorry,” he mumbles again, and again, and again.

The day is catching up to him, lump forming in his throat and skin crawling. “Hey,” says Niall. equally choked up. “We won; it’s okay. We won.”

And it’s not okay; of course it’s not okay, but Zayn sags a little, lets himself breathe so that his spine doesn’t feel like a bowstring ready to snap. Niall smells like smoke, and Zayn does too, and he refuses to let himself think about it. “Why doesn’t it feel like it?” he asks.

“Doesn’t matter,” answers Niall, unflinchingly matter of fact, “it’s over. We did it,” and he sounds like he’s still in a bit of shock but also like he means it.

Zayn pulls back and Niall winces, rubbing at his ribcage. There must be bruises, Zayn realizes, just like the ones smattered across his face and chest. “Let’s get you cleaned up,” he offers, and Niall reaches a hand up almost subconsciously, fingering the dried blood up near his hairline and across his temple.

“Yeah,” he says, quietly. “Thank you.”

Zayn isn’t forgiven, most likely, and he’s perfectly okay with that because it only makes sense, but Niall is going to let Zayn help him, and it feels so good to be useful that Zayn can only answer, “don’t mention it,” in the steadiest voice he can muster.

Things are still broken and ugly and off-balance, but they are picking up the pieces one at a time.

…

Zayn walks into Liam’s room with the express intention of telling him off, of using all of the pent up energy he has to scream until his throat gives out. He has a whole speech ready, about how they’re all going to swear off of self-sacrifice and heroism, about how Zayn is going to murder Liam for that stunt he pulled, about how he’s so disproportionately upset because he may or may not be stupidly in love with Liam, but all of his plans go out the window when he bursts through the door and finds Liam scrubbing hurriedly at his face, turning away from Zayn.

“Please pretend you didn’t see anything,” says Liam, voice wobbly, and Zayn’s heart swells up warm in his chest.

Instead of walking back the way he came like Liam wants him to, he hops up onto the bed to join him. “Hey,” he says, gentle as a breeze, and waits.

“Hi,” answers Liam, “this is embarrassing.”

Zayn makes a small sound of protest in the back of his throat, and Liam doesn’t stop hiding his face, so Zayn has to pry his hands away. Liam lets him. “You’re okay,” says Zayn, less of a question and more of an answer.

“Little shaken, I guess,” says Liam, and Zayn wants to laugh because _no kidding_ , but it isn’t funny, is the thing.

He means to say something about how Liam is an idiot martyr, trying to jump back into the righteous indignation that he’s let fester, but what comes out is: “So it looks like we’re even, then.” An eye for an eye, or at the very least a stupid selfless act for a stupid selfless act.

Liam, by some miracle (or maybe just because they’re so in tune with each other) doesn’t need any clarification. “Looks like,” he answers helplessly, voice rough, and Zayn reaches out to smooth Liam’s hair away from his forehead, lets his hand linger, feels every line of tension in Liam’s face and wants to pour warmth into him until the crease in his brow is gone. 

Liam is replaying the collapse of the building over and over in his head, skipping on it like a broken record, and his thoughts taste like ash and bone. “It would’ve fallen anyway,” says Zayn, and immediately wants to bite it back, knows it isn’t enough in any of the ways that matter and even some of the ones that do. 

He shouldn’t have worried, probably. Liam just sighs and swipes at the wetness right under his eyes where the skin is shiny. Zayn wants to inch closer but isn’t sure he’s allowed. “Maybe,” says Liam, uncharacteristically small, and it pinches at Zayn’s heart, but there’s no changing Liam’s mind on this right now.

They sit in silence for a bit, Liam flashing through memories of the day before and Zayn listening quietly, almost wishing he couldn’t hear it. It would be easier, certainly, and it would also make him feel less like he needs to get out of the country just to give these people some space. Zayn is in the process of kicking his shoes off when Liam turns to him suddenly, shadows playing across his face.

There’s this intent in his eyes that Zayn can’t quite decipher, that sets his pulse racing, and maybe it’s crazy that Zayn still reacts so viscerally to Liam, but there isn’t anything he can do to change that.

“Wish I knew what was happening in there,” Liam says, tapping a finger gently against Zayn’s temple, and it’s quiet and considering.

Zayn has to shut his eyes, gather himself. “Nothing exciting, I promise.”

Liam huffs out a disbelieving laugh. “You’re the least boring person I know, c’mon.” And Zayn’s eyebrows furrow.

Surely Liam is joking, or messing him about. Surely Zayn is the least boring, even just out of the boys in the house – it doesn’t make sense. Louis is the literal antonym of boring, incapable of sitting still and always bouncing around and quick to let you in on the joke even after you’ve already been made into the butt of it. Or Harry, with his easy smile and little quirks, the light in his eyes and how he’s always up for fun, how he doesn’t question hardly anything so long as it comes from someone he trusts. Or Niall, of course Niall, whose newfound stoicism is not and never will be enough to stifle the energy that lights him up like a beacon. 

Surely Liam can’t mean _Zayn_. Quiet, shy around new people, sometimes has trouble watching his mouth, anxious, dizzying, difficult to handle _Zayn_. But Liam is thinking _it’s you, it’s you, it’s you_ like he wants Zayn to hear, like an offering, like he means it.

And the blanket underneath them is old and a little scratchy but very warm, and Liam’s earnest eyes are searing into his skin, and he just needs a moment to process, is all. 

Seconds pass, and still, Zayn has not gotten himself all the way together. A minute goes, two, and Liam is sitting patiently and waiting, and Zayn is thinking far too much and giving nothing up, which is the reason Liam said anything in the first place, anyway, and it’s all so much that he knows he needs some space to breathe. “Let’s go for a walk,” he suggests, and Liam’s eyebrows go up, surprised, arching up towards his messy hairline.

Liam looks out the window, sees the storm clouds gathering and the way the winter is slowly giving itself up into spring, is imagining the stinging kiss of wind where it will inevitably nip at his ears, his nose, his neck. Liam is thinking about how bloody cold it’s going to be, and then he looks at Zayn with the ghost of a smile licking his lips and holds a hand out. “Sure,” he answers, completely guileless, like he doesn’t care for a second about his own discomfort if it’ll make Zayn happy, and Zayn-

Zayn doesn’t know what to with that, exactly, so he takes Liam’s hand and leads him out the door, bracing against the chilled air.

They make it to the edge of the trees where hints of city begin to pop up before Liam breaks the silence. “All right?” he asks, squeezing Zayn’s hand.

Zayn sighs softly just to see the wisps of his breath floating in the air. “Just thinking.”

“You never told me what about,” says Liam with a fake pout, and he’s even pretty when he’s pulling faces, “proper rude, that is,” and smiles a little when Zayn grimaces. “I’m just playing,” and Liam always was quick on the draw with this kind of thing – he bemoans his lack of vocabulary sometimes, or how dismal his maths skills are, but Zayn sees the quiet intelligence, how good Liam is with _people_ , how willing to learn and adapt.

The sun is hanging low in the sky, shadows elongating, and it just keeps getting colder. Leaving the house was maybe a bad idea, but Liam tugs Zayn closer into his side, tucking a hand into his back pocket, and, well. Zayn isn’t complaining, really.

“Have we always been this in between?” he asks, instead of the quip he was going to make, and his heart takes a dizzying swoop. “I mean,” he amends, quick to clarify, nerves rushing his words a bit, “has it always been like this for you and me? So…” he waves a hand around, trying to find the word, “…us?”

And sometimes, honestly, it’s like Liam is the mind reader, always so good at picking up Zayn’s train of thought even when it’s convoluted and barely makes sense to Zayn himself. 

He can see Liam shuffling through moments in his head, fuzzy images swimming in his mind. Some of these memories are of things Zayn has forgotten – breakfast, just the two of them, Zayn still wearing his glasses and hair soft and unstyled, flopping over his forehead; the first time Zayn showed Liam his sketchbook, shy and all thumbs; Harry’s birthday last year and how they both snuck out to the balcony at the same time; their first kiss ages ago, how they were both so drunk they could barely see straight, a sloppy drag of lips immediately eclipsed by giggles, but that one, Zayn remembers. 

Liam brings a thumb up to swipe roughly across his flushed lower lip, still thinking, and then: “I reckon nothing’s changed. It’s you and me, always has been,” and there’s an edge of helplessness to his voice, but that isn’t a bad thing, Zayn is starting to realize.

And Liam makes it sound so easy, thoughts clear and bright where Zayn’s are clouded with insecurity and backtracking and impossibility and-

“You’re freaking out,” says Liam, face still soft, eyes still soft, lips still quirked halfway into a smile, “Don’t freak out.”

And Zayn wants to say _I’m not freaking out_ , but instead what comes out is: “I keep thinking of the way you looked walking away from me,” and that wasn’t the way this conversation was supposed to go, but he can’t stop now, words rushing out of him, and Zayn thought he was over being scared. But even though Liam is right there next to him, it still feels like he’s slipping right through Zayn’s fingers. “I thought I’d have to leave you there, or you’d do something else stupidly heroic and get yourself killed, or-” he stops, takes a deep breath, “We’re proper terrible at the whole saving the day thing. Got in way over our heads. I just keep wondering what I would’ve done if we’d actually lost, y’know?”

Liam is quiet for a beat. It’s sidewalk under their feet, now, as opposed to the muddy leaves they were trampling before, and Zayn feels a shiver crawl all the way down his spine, wind whipping at his unprotected neck.

There’s warmth emanating from every point where Zayn and Liam are touching, and that, if nothing else, has been the same from the very start. Liam is biting at his bottom lip and getting lost in his thoughts, and Zayn dives in to drag him back out, and that is the same, too. Before he can say anything, though, Liam stops walking.

And then they’re standing across from each other, still holding hands, just a little too close for ‘best mates’ (but they aren’t kidding anyone or themselves, even, not anymore, at least – Liam and Zayn have always been more than mates, always that extra shade of something that warms toes and has them seeking each other out in crowded rooms without fail), and their breaths are mingling brightly, puffs of white that disappear as soon as they hit the air.

Zayn’s heartbeat is too loud in the stillness. “Thought we said we were even,” is what Liam finally says, voice muted by the cold and the miles of distance between them that had crept up when they were too busy trying to save the world.

Zayn shrugs one shoulder, a half attempt at casual that tailspins into flame. “Sorry,” he mumbles. “I know it’s stupid.”

Liam is the picture of stability, cold hand coming up to cup Zayn’s flushing cheek. “Not stupid,” he argues. “I was there, too. It’s not stupid at all.”

And with anyone else, Zayn would probably shut down, change the subject, fling himself as far away from here as he possibly can, but if he can’t be honest with Liam then what’s the point? 

“I love you,” is what Zayn says, heart pounding thickly. “I love you, and I was scared I’d never see you again.” And that’s the long and short of it, really. Zayn isn’t always great at articulating heavy thoughts, but he can do this; he can give Liam this, at least. Because Liam has the kindest eyes of anyone Zayn’s ever met, and Zayn is still angry, but Liam gave up everything for Zayn, was willing to walk right into the heart of the fire, turned back into a burning building to save just one more person…and if Niall and Cher and the rest of them hadn’t fixed it all at the last minute, then Liam wouldn’t be standing here, and- “I can’t do this without you,” he finishes, imploring, urging Liam to understand.

Liam bites at his lower lip. “I’ll always come back,” and Zayn is used to empty promises, but Liam means it with every fiber of his being, is the most transparent person Zayn has ever known. And Zayn believes him. He does.

“And I love you, too,” adds Liam, bright like an afterthought, and they made it. It’s over. In the future, there will be more battles and viciousness and tears and heartbreak, but right in this moment, they are okay. 

There is absolutely nothing stopping Zayn from tugging Liam in closer by the wrist and kissing him like they’ll never see each other again, like the world is ending, like this is the very last time. Liam’s mouth is soft and hot, and his cold nose is bumping against Zayn’s cheek. Zayn’s hands are all over, around Liam’s neck, and then trailing down his chest, one in his hair, and the other on his broad shoulder, because he has to remind himself that Liam is right here in front of him. They are both here. They are both right here.

He doesn’t know how long it is before they break apart, but he does know that Liam’s stupid grin is among the most beautiful things he’s ever seen.

“You’re freezing,” Zayn says, face flinching away from Liam’s icy fingers where they trail up his cheek, but he’s smiling a sweet, private smile. “Let me buy you a coffee,” and he’s dragging Liam by their joined hands once again, skirting them past businesspeople in clean suits and mothers with their children and a gaggle of teenagers, all heading home as the afternoon eclipses into evening.

Liam, for his part, doesn’t protest, and the flush in Zayn’s heart gets just a little bit deeper, a little bit hotter, a little bit fiercer.

///

Harry comes home from the hospital on a Tuesday with twenty-three neat stitches, and a truckload of painkillers. “Hospitals are terrible,” are the first words out of his mouth when he gets back to the base, closely followed by, “we did it!” with a stupidly endearing fist pump, boyish grin firmly fixed on his face despite the fact that he can barely walk without grimacing.

He hasn’t tried jumping since he decided to be absolutely _daft_ and take a _knife_ to the _stomach_ , which is probably for the best. Louis hasn’t actually left his side for more than a few minutes at a time since he got out of surgery. That’s also probably for the best; at least, it is according to Louis.

The first few days pass in a blur of yelling and confusion and processing things. They’re all high strung and stressed out, understandably, and they all made it out alive. Louis ribs Niall about Cher when he hears what happened, and Niall laughs his first real laugh since getting home. 

It’s Friday when he finally manages to trap Harry in a serious conversation. The blame is on both of them, really, for how long it takes. Harry can’t help but continuously spew optimism and sunshine or whatever because that’s generally his response when things are dark and people are worrying about him, and Louis has made too many stupid jokes in the last few days to be able to even count. Here, though, now, they can actually talk about what’s going to happen now that they’ve saved the world.

Funnily enough, it’s Harry that starts it. “Got a letter today,” he says, waving it around. “I think I’m on academic probation.”

“Well, when was the last time you went to class?”

Harry stops in his tracks, thinking. “Sometime before my concussion.”

Louis is fighting a smile. “Hm,” he says. “Yeah, that could do it.”

“Yeah,” says Harry. “I think that’s where I went wrong. Would’ve been better if it hadn’t been finals week that I missed, probably.” He tosses the letter onto the table, stretching his arms languidly behind his back. “Failed all my classes after studying like mad all term.” 

Louis hops up onto the granite countertop, swinging his feet back and forth. If he concentrates, he can brush the ground every other time, untied shoelaces twirling in the air. “So what happens next?”

Harry walks to stand between Louis’ legs, and Louis stops moving quite so much. “Next,” he answers, “I decide whether to go back for the next term or not. And if I do go back, I pull better grades. So as long as we don’t try the whole superhero act again, I should be okay.”

Louis frowns. “Do you think that was it? One and done?” He pauses. “I guess I thought it wasn’t over just because we managed to get out of one huge fight alive. Surely there are other evil people out there, just waiting for their chance.”

Harry’s eyes go a little wide, rounding out, and his jaw softens. “I didn’t think about that.”

“I mean, we’d have to be careful, and maybe from now on this will be the calmest, most well behaved city on the planet, but if something big happens again…I don’t know if I could sit by quietly.”

“Yeah,” says Harry, deflecting rather impressively, “you suck at ‘quietly.’”

Louis, offended, flicks Harry on the nose, and then laughs when Harry crosses his eyes. “I’m amazing at everything,” he replies, and Harry agrees easily. Louis wouldn’t expect anything else – Harry always humors him, and it’s a fact that sits warm in the space beneath his ribcage. “Well,” amends Louis, “everything except for maths. Maybe it’s a good thing you’re the one in school, and I’m the jobless bum.”

Harry tilts his head, and Louis wants to retract that statement immediately, feels a bit like free fall. “Yeah,” he says. “I lost my job. Not my first time getting sacked, though. I’m used to it by now.” The treble of bravado has caved in on itself, so he mostly just sounds rueful and small. For whatever reason, he takes it as a cue to keep going, because he’s never been able to keep his mouth shut about anything, really. “I was late everyday as it was, so not showing up several days in a row without calling in was the last straw. I always knew my boss had it in for me. He was just waiting for the right time to fire me. He’s lucky I gave him an excuse to, or I’d have been there forever.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” asks Harry, cutting right past the disaster of the explanation.

At least it’s a fairly easy question to answer. “You were still unconscious when I got the call, and then you woke up and things got hectic, and now we’re settling back in, and it’s still hectic, guess I just forgot to mention it.”

“That’s fair,” concedes Harry, and it is, but Louis is still shaken about how Harry looked in that hospital bed, and just bringing it up has made Louis start thinking about it, about how pale he’d been even against the stark white sheets, about the steady beeping of the machines, about how Louis had to be dragged out under protest to get food while Harry was in surgery. 

Louis bites at his lip, and then reaches his hands out, tugs Harry even closer by his narrow hips. In the watery mid-morning light, Harry’s eyes are a sweet, pale green, like they’re illuminated from the inside. “I keep thinking I’ll wake up and realize I dreamed the ending,” Louis says softly. “Like suddenly it’ll be two weeks ago and none of it would be over. I don’t think my body has processed all of the adrenaline yet.”

Harry’s mouth quirks, and a dimple sits deep in his left cheek. The lines of his face are all soft with fondness. Louis wants to squirm under his searchlight gaze, but there’s nowhere to go. “I know,” says Harry, slow and low and quiet, “and now everything is so settled.”

“Like we’re waiting for the other shoe to drop,” replies Louis, and Harry nods, thoughtful.

“Yeah, just like that.”

Louis’ hands are still resting on Harry’s waist. He can feel the warmth of his skin seeping through the thin shirt. “I don’t think I can go back to normal,” admits Louis after a pause, swallowing hard. “I can’t just pretend none of this happened.”

Liam stumbles in, then, scrubbing sleep out of his eyes, flush high on his cheeks from the cold. The season is dissolving slowly into sunshine, but the bitterness of winter always stays past its welcome here. “All right?” asks Liam, voice rough like he’s just woken up, and Louis and Harry respond with the affirmative, Harry taking a step back away from where he’d been practically on top of Louis. “What’re we talking about that’s got you two so quiet?”

Louis is the first to answer. “Just chatting about what’s next,” he says easily, already having swallowed the lump in his throat from earlier.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, Liam,” and it’s Harry this time, “do we go back to being students or musicians or full time workers or whatever we were doing before, or do we figure out a way to get back out there and fight the good fight, ‘n all that?”

Liam’s quiet for a moment, scratching absently at his stubble. “I thought we’d do both,” he answers plainly, and Louis shouldn’t be surprised – this is _Liam_ , head on straight, pride and joy of his family, has all their schedules memorized without even having to try, is literally incapable of doing anything but his best – but he says it so confidently, is the thing, like he didn’t even have to think about it much.

“Both,” says Louis, rolling it around in his mouth and finding he quite likes the feel of it, “having normal little lives and fighting crime on the side. Sounds like a dream come true,” and he tilts some wryness into his tone, but that doesn’t make it any less true.

Harry’s eyes are tight like he’s trying to solve a complicated problem in his head. He shakes his hair out before speaking, wild curls flying every which way. “I’m already on probation at the university,” but it doesn’t sound like a protest so much as a challenge, like he’s daring Liam to come up with a solution, a way to work around the issue. Like he’s hoping to be proven wrong.

Liam purses his lips, features bunching up on one side as he quirks his face, thinking. “Get a study buddy? Borrow notes for the classes you miss?”

And Louis likes this game, the throwing out suggestions game. “Send the school proof of your stay in the hospital and threaten to sue?” he tries, and Harry rolls his eyes, but he looks helplessly amused. “Make sure the next person you save from mortal danger is the dean? Take all of the money you have and get it from the bank in small bills, and then wave it around in front of whoever’s in charge of giving out academic probation?” His nose wrinkles on the last one, imagining a whole panel of crotchety old men making his boy sad. 

Harry just laughs him off. “So take it as it comes?”

Liam brightens. “Exactly!” he says, too loud, bordering on a shout, and he has the decency to look abashed about it. “Exactly,” he repeats, at a more normal volume, and Louis laughs, leaning over to ruffle his hair. Liam jumps away on instinct, turning to tug at Louis’ shirt with nimble fingers.

Louis wrenches himself free and jumps off of the counter. “We’re going to roll with the punches!” he proclaims, karate kicking out, heart soaring into lightness for the first time in too long.

Harry jumps right into it with him. “We’re going to go with the flow!” he adds, shimmying in what is apparently supposed to be a good approximation of ‘the flow,’ whatever it may be.

Liam is too busy giggling to join them, and Niall and Zayn walk in practically back to back, probably coming in to see what all the fuss is about. 

It takes the room several minutes to settle down into something vaguely manageable, and Louis is the only one here whose cuts and bruises aren’t still fading, clinging to skin flushed with happiness. But for the first time since this whole mess began, it feels like all of them are okay. Liam, the first to recover, explains to Niall and Zayn that they’re going to just keep doing what they’ve been doing and hope for the best.

Niall and Zayn look unsurprised. “Well, yeah,” says Niall, “was that not always the plan?”

Even Zayn, who had been so full of (probably situationally appropriate) trepidation, is nodding along like it’s the easiest decision in the world. “It’s not like people don’t know who we are, or how to find us. We might as well own up to it. Maybe we’ll get better at this with practice.” He doesn’t look especially happy about it, but he also doesn’t look like he wants to take them all and move the whole group to a different country where they’ll be safe, or as safe as they ever are, and that definitely counts as progress in Louis’ head.

He almost feels silly for doubting any of it at all, for thinking that things could go back to the way they used to be. “I need to get a job, then,” says Louis, and he delivers it like a joke but it’s entirely the truth. “Did anyone manage to get through that without getting in a spot of trouble?”

“Academic probation for me as well,” says Liam, but he doesn’t look too bothered.

Niall shakes his head, too. “I’ve got a lot of groveling to do.” He groans, looks miserable just thinking about it.

Louis looks at Zayn, who replies with a flippant. “Told my boss it was a family emergency, and she said not to worry about it.” 

“You’re kidding,” says Louis flatly, and then Zayn is grinning. “You insufferable little suck-up! I can’t believe this!” And the room is bubbling into laughter again, effervescence spilling into sunlight spilling into smiles so big, their cheeks are hurting.

Zayn just shrugs, posture loose and easy and happy, and it’s almost overwhelmingly good to see him like this again after so long of blame and guilt and dark eyes and looking down and refusing to accept the fact that the only reason anything is okay right now is because he gathered them all together in the first place.

“So it’s settled,” proclaims Liam, “we’re a team. Whatever happens, we’ll deal with it together.”

“Together,” repeats Louis, and maybe they just escaped certain death by the skin of their teeth, but he looks around at his boys and feels too big for his body, like his heart has swollen up to five times its size. 

Louis bites at his lip to fight the sap in his smile and thinks they could take on the entire world if they really wanted to.

 

END

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So there we have it. Thank you so much for reading, and I hope you enjoyed it as much as I enjoyed writing it. Come talk to me on tumblr @ outofcases. xoxo


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